Plant-Based Campus at Equinox Festival in Stockholm

Photo of attendees at the Equinox sustainability festival. Source: AwareNest on Facebook.

On 3 October 2026, campaigners from Plant-Based Campus (PBC) held a 45-minute afternoon guest session at Equinox, a one-day sustainability workshop festival at Folkuniversitetet in central Stockholm. PBC’s presentation focused on mobilisation: how students and community groups can organise together to bring plant-based food to their universities.

Equinox is a recurring festival run by the Swedish non-profit AwareNest. The invitation reached PBC through Katerina Molnarova, coordinator of PBC Stockholm University, who had attended an earlier Equinox and forwarded it to the team.

Keeping food systems on the agenda in environmental circles is a priority for PBC. According to Our World in Data, food production accounts for around 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In PBC’s experience, food still gets far less attention than that impact suggests. This is true even among people who care about the environment, and more so outside those circles.

Mobilisation is central to how PBC works. Large numbers of people can create change, particularly when they work together on tangible goals, such as a fully plant-based menu at universities. Voluntary mobilisation is especially interesting in a university setting. Many students have the flexibility to volunteer alongside their studies, and a campus brings many potential volunteers together in one place. Getting people involved in activism while they are young also matters, as it trains the effective activists of the future and gives them skills they can carry into whatever they do next.

Efforts to create more plant-based food systems are massively underfunded. Volunteer mobilisation is therefore a key way to increase the human resources and capacity of the movement while keeping costs low. This is a key differentiator for PBC, which is student-led and built around volunteers.

Nora Guvå, a campaigner from the PBC KTH campaign, says:

“Change doesn’t come from a few people caring a lot. It comes from many people organising together. Equinox gave us a chance to talk about how students can do that, and to show that starting early builds skills people can use for years to come.”

Equinox also gave PBC a chance to meet others working on sustainability. Many people and organisations are working towards plant-based food systems, but in PBC’s experience they are often disconnected from one another. Building community, shared contacts and shared knowledge makes every group more effective. Campaigners can learn from each other’s successes, introduce each other to people who can help, and avoid repeating work. PBC believes the movement would benefit enormously from closer working relationships, especially around tangible projects such as making universities fully plant-based.

PBC campaigners in Stockholm are now planning a lunch lecture on food systems for students who have not yet been involved in the campaign, with the aim of holding it before the end of the semester.

If you are a student in Stockholm, fill out the form (here) to get involved with PBC, join an existing campaign, or start a new one.

Plant-Based Campus is a democratic student-led campaign working with universities and higher education institutions to transition to 100% plant-based catering to reduce environmental impacts.