Environment- and climate-friendly offer

In the University of Zurich’s canteens and cafeterias, we serve more than 100,000 meals per year and bear great responsibility, including where the environment is concerned. Promoting awareness and balance in consumption is a major concern for ZFV. We want to contribute by showing the Menu Sustainability Index rating for all lunchtime menus. With this in mind, we are already letting our catering team plan sustainable menus and giving our guests the opportunity to choose a sustainable meal.

Furthermore, since 2019 ZFV has been assessing its direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions created by the company as a whole, for example, though using energy and the purchase of all goods and services. The results show that the majority of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by purchasing food. We therefore face the greatest pressure to reduce emissions in the catering sector.

How environmentally or climate-friendly a meal is depends primarily on the proportion of animal products it contains. For this reason, ZFV is opting for an increased number of attractive vegan and vegetarian menus, and training its teams of chefs so that guests can be environmentally friendly without having to sacrifice taste. What does this mean specifically?

• At least 50% of choices on the daily menus are vegan or vegetarian:
  • Every day there is a vegan, a vegetarian and a meat dish available in the three major UZH canteens of Zentrum, Irchel and Binzmühle.
  • The smaller canteens daily offer a vegan or vegetarian menu line (alternating), plus a second menu line including meat.
• We offer two vegan, three vegetarian and three meat sandwich options. The sandwich of the month is either vegan or vegetarian.
• Our salad buffets are 100% vegan or vegetarian; meat is only available if there is a surplus, to avoid food waste.
• There are vegan toppings on the salad buffets.
• In our kitchen we only use vegan bouillon and vegan sauces to avoid hidden animal products.

The ZFV Food & Beverage Charter combines food service principles and sourcing policy in a binding scheme. The guidelines are aimed at implementing responsible and sustainable thinking and action in all ZFV restaurants with clear and standardised requirements.

F&B Charta (PDF, 517 KB)

At the University of Zurich we exclusively use Swiss meat in our menu lines and prefer products that have been awarded the IP Suisse quality mark. All our bread is IP Suisse certified. The Swiss quality mark stands for environmentally friendly and responsibly produced food, as well as natural livestock farming appropriate to the species. We exclusively use organic cow’s milk and cream.

We only offer fish and shellfish in the menu lines occasionally. These are sustainably caught and come preferably from Switzerland. We are therefore making an active stand against overfishing of the seas.