Public sector catering operators are being encouraged to sign-up to a campaign, #20percentlessmeat from PSC100 Group, aimed at bringing down the amount of meat on their menus by 20% across schools, hospitals, universities and care homes. Working with animal charity Humane Society International/UK and others it is estimated that the carbon emissions savings, should the 20% target be reached across the sector, would be over 200,000 metric tonnes. If it is achieved that would cut the estimated 45m kg of meat served within the sector every year by about 9m kg. In animal terms that meat saving equates to 45,000 cows or 16m chickens. It would have the same environmental effect as removing more than 400,000 cars from the roads for a year. What the figures mean >45m metric tonnes of meat served in the public sector each year, which generates 1.04m metric tonnes equivalent of greenhouse gases, which is the same as that produced by 640,000 UK passenger cars >20% saving is the equivalent of 9m metric tonnes of meat, which generates 208,000 metric tones equivalent of greenhouse gases, which is the same as the annual carbon footprint of 32,000 people or a town the size of Whitstable in Kent. A range of catering industry sources, including all the major associations involved in the public sector, provided data to calculate the size of the industry and how much meat is consumed. These figures were turned over over to a food sustainability consultancy called Foodsteps who took this data to generate CO2 emissions figures and provide some real world examples of what these were equivalent to for illustration purposes. (source: http://20percentlessmeat.co.uk/)