Go Green Week at NYU Shanghai

By Omer Cohen

The second annual Go Green Week at NYU Shanghai begins the week of April 11^th. A collaboration between the student clubs “Animal Rights & Herbivores Society” and “Green Shanghai,” the Go Green Week seeks to help the NYU Shanghai community to transition to a more sustainable lifestyle by raising awareness of the environmental, health, and ethical dilemmas of consuming of animal products. The Go Green Week also brings awareness to the environmental crises that our world is facing, and promote behaviour that will help to solve them. This year, student leaders at NYU Shanghai have collaborated with their colleagues at the New York and Abu Dhabi campuses in order to make this a global initiative.

Besides holding daily events to promote this cause, the Go Green Week has recruited ambassadors to help get as many people as possible to commit to a plant-based diet for a week. This Go Green Challenge offers participants a choice between becoming vegetarian, vegan, or raw-vegan for just one week. According to the documentary “Cowspiracy,” which will be screened as part of the week’s events, if 150 people commit to a vegan diet for a week, we can save 1.16 million gallons of water, 47,250 pounds of grain, 31,500 sq ft of land, 21,000 lb of CO2 equivalent, and 1,050 lives of animals. So far there have been 150 sign-ups, with 69% choosing to take the vegetarian challenge, and the rest either vegan or raw-vegan. Among the participants of the challenge is NYU Shanghai chancellor Yu Lizhong, who has committed to be a vegetarian for the duration of the Go Green Week.

The events that comprise the Go Green Week at the Shanghai campus are a product of student clubs collaborating with each other: the environmental club, Green Shanghai, has organized a major conference on sustainability with influential guest speakers that are experts in their field. The Animal Rights & Herbivores Society has invited Chinese animal rights activist and filmmaker Jian Yi to screen his short film “What’s for Dinner,” which exposes the cruelty of slaughterhouses and provides information on whether or not eating meat is sustainable. The Quiz Bowl club has created a Green Edition Quiz Bowl event, in which trivia questions will be based on healthy eating and environmentally friendly lifestyles.

Check out all the Go Green Week events!

Omer Cohen is the founder and Vice President of the Animal Rights & Herbivores Society at NYU Shanghai. He is a sophomores majoring in Chemistry and minoring in Chinese. He loves playing guitar, hiking, writing poetry and scuba diving.