City profile for Gothenburg
Mistra Urban Future‌
Mistra Urban Futures is an international center forsustainable urban futures founded by seven organisations from the Gothenburg region. The vision of Mistra Urban Futures is to increasecapacities to transform current, unsustainable urbandevelopment pathways to more sustainable urbanfutures in the global South and North. Mistra Urban Futures focus areas are Fair, Green andDense cities. Separately and even more when they are combined, these focus areas make a powerfulcontribution to sustainable urban development, bothin practice and research. Food is one the issues of the research network.
Community gardens…
The community garden “Stadsnära odling” is an innovative public platform where citizens can log and describe their growing project and the place they intend to set the community garden. The platform allows checking the land availability, who own it and start administrative practices to implement the project.Stadsnära odling is run by the City of Gothenburg’s Property Office with the aim to encourage small-scale cultivation close to peoples’ homes. The goal is to start new plantations, farming in unconventional places, cultivations that bring joy and help to spread knowledge and create contact between generations and people from different parts of the city and the world. But also to develop the cultivation and allotments that already exist in Gothenburg.
Gothenburg falafel…
Stadsjord (“urban agriculture”) is a three years projects built on multistakeholder engagement in sustainable small scale food production. The aim is to reach the development of socially, ecologically and economically resilient and create more fun in urban life. Indeed thanks to this local production the so-called “Gothenburg falafel” is made with urban local produced beans, instead of chick peas that are not growing in Sweden. It is a good example of sustainable food fusion to match an ethnic popular food with ingredients available locally.
Guldhedsskolan’s pedagogical school garden‌
This two years project is one of two pilots for pedagogical gardens and will be followed by four new schools in 2013. This project aims to collect lessons and generate a pedagogical package to mainstream the pedagogical garden practice to all schools of the Municipality.
Fairtrade City‌
In Spring 2011 Gothenburg was certified Fairtrade City. This means that the Municipality must live up to criteria for fair trade procurement, conduct active information work on the subject and have a certain amount of Fairtrade products on supply in shops, cafĂŠs and workplaces.
Global Picnic‌
This young and fresh initiative aims to organise convivial food events to bring different ethnical backgrounds together and reciprocally stimulate exchanges on food and sustainability from different ethnical points of view. Exchanges are source of mutual tolerance. Other projects under development are an inter faith bus tour, tasting nights and cooking classes with different themes around the city. http://globalpicnic.se
Lindüsskolan school Chef‌
Even Bakke is a young and motivated Chef who innovates towards sustainable practices and challenge canteens rules. He takes part in international canteen Chef competitions, involves pupils to help in the kitchen for a couple of hours a day and proposes to the pupils to taste the food in a self-service way, instead of wasting food they don't like after having taken too much on the plate. This open minded chef intends to raise interest and respect to food and creates dialogue with canteen employees and as well as with the pupils.
The 'Klokboken' of the tastiest sustainable meals‌
The City of Gothenburg's environmental committee invited chefs from the city's kitchens to share their tastiest sustainable recipes. This cooperation resulted in a sustainable cookery book named 'Klokboken'. The name plays on words in Swedish: 'kok' means cookery and klok means wise. This cookery book contains, in addition to recipes for sustainable meals, practical tips on what every individuals can do to increase the percentage of sustainable meals.
Class sustainable recipe competition‌
In addition to increasing the share of organically produced foodstuffs, some schools have begun to work with a commitment to specific issues, such as reducing the amount of plate waste. Another educational way of opening the eyes of schoolchildren has been to involve them in a recipe competition. The class that composed a meal consisting of a large share of organically produced foodstuffs, vegetables and legumes won. The winning recipe was then served in the school restaurant.
Environment diploma‌
The city has set up a labelling process for public events such as concerts or conferences with a set of sustainable criteria including organic catering, reduced waste, eco-label products, use of tap water for drinking, etc in order to award the event with an “environment diploma�.