Carbon footprint in our menu

How you can see the sustainability of our dishes

studierendenWERK BERLIN offers a varied range of meals in its dining halls and backshops, and we also pay attention to sustainability. We have replaced a large part of our former classic recipes with vegetarian and vegan dishes. We pay attention to regionality where possible and strive for sustainability where we can.

In the Swiss organization eaternity, we have found a partner that calculates and evaluates the sustainability of meals. Since 2009, eaternity has been building a comprehensive environmental balance food database and has now also analyzed our dishes.

Each of our dishes features an environmental score.

We report the CO2 emissions in grams of CO2 equivalents (cloud) and the water footprint in liters of water (water drop) for each dish. The environmental score is based on the Eaternity database. More informatio: https://eaternity.org/foodprint/database

Note: If a meal does not yet show values for CO2 or water footprint, there are no reliable calculation values for this dish yet.

Carbon footprint

To measure the CO₂ footprint of each dish, origin, transport, season, convenience level, organic or non-organic were taken into account for the foods. A life cycle analysis was used to calculate their CO2 value.

However, to evaluate the dish in terms of its contribution to the carbon footprint, a comparative value is needed. For this purpose, Eaternity analyzed data from a total of 150 establishments. These establishments come exclusively from the system catering sector for business, industry, schools, universities, from the healthcare sector and the majority are located in Switzerland. Based on this data, an average value was determined, which forms the evaluation basis for the question of whether a dish (compared to the average) improves or worsens the carbon footprint or the water footprint.

Our dishes are evaluated in three categories:

The green cloud means that the dish significantly improves the CO₂ balance. The CO₂ value of this dish is less than half the average CO₂ value of all the dishes considered.

The yellow cloud means that the dish slightly improves the CO₂ balance. The CO₂ value of this dish is below the average CO₂ value of all the dishes considered.

The red cloud means that the dish worsens the CO₂ balance. The CO₂ value of this dish is above the average CO₂ value of all the dishes considered.

Water foot print

Beim Wasserfußabdruck wird bewertet, wie hoch der Wasserverbrauch für das einzelne Gericht im Vergleich mit dem durchschnittlichen Wasserverbrauch für die Produktion aller betrachteten Gerichte ist.

Die Bewertung wird in drei Kategorien unterteilt:

The water consumption is below the average comparative value of all the dishes considered.

The water consumption for this dish is twice as high as the average comparative value for all the dishes considered.

The water consumption for this dish is more than twice the average comparative value for all the dishes considered.