Can you live 40 days without meat?

Hi eco-buddies!

Do you know the concept of ‘Days Without Meat’? No? Well, it’s time you do! In 2011, the Dutch student Alexia Leysen launched the campaign ‘Days Without Meat’. The action is simple: you quit eating meat or fish during 40 days (or you just eat less of it) to reduce your footprint. According to Alexia, it’s totally not a plea to convince everyone to become a vegetarian. On the contrary, the goal is to make people aware of the fact that the production of meat is one of the most harmful things for the environment. The action starts every year at Ash Wednesday and ends at Easter. This year, there isn’t an official media campaign like last year. But the action still goes on. They’ve made an event on Facebook and you can find some articles in newspapers and magazines that refer to the action and propose vegetarian recipes for the coming 40 days.

As we already mentioned above, the objective of ’40 days without meat’ is to make meat eaters conscious of the fact that the production of meat is really bad for the environment and that eating meat every day isn’t necessary. Each veggie day, you save 11m² of your footprint (this equals 1/3 of the average footprint), 1100l water (or 10 baths) and 2,1kg greenhouse gasses (or a 15km drive in a car). That’s quite impressive isn’t it?

Participants admit that going vegetarian is easier than they expected. Moreover, they say that they will continue eating less meat or fish in the future. Finally, the participants felt well physically and mentally during these 40 days and they found it a great opportunity to discover the vegetarian kitchen!

One of our team members accepted the challenge and tries to ‘say no’ to meat and fish dishes during 40 days. So now, we want to know what you think of the action! Are you participating or would you ever try it? Let us know!

Ann-Sophie, Sofie & Hélène