Photo of the PBC Helsinki launch, held with support from the PBC Aalto team.
In September 2026, students launched Plant-Based Campus (PBC) Helsinki at the University of Helsinki. It is the second PBC campaign in Finland and the 19th PBC campaign overall. The PBC Aalto team helped run the launch in person, and the evening continued at a pub afterwards, which is where a lot of good Finnish planning has always happened.
PBC Helsinki is campaigning for the university's catering to move to 100% plant-based food. The university already points in this direction. Its Carbon Neutral University of Helsinki by 2030 roadmap aims for catering services that prioritise plant-based food by 2030. Food made up around 4% of the university's carbon footprint in 2024, and most of those emissions come from the lunch cafeterias on its premises. The campaign wants to help the university meet its own target.
Finland also has a long tradition that campaigners can build on: pea soup on Thursdays. According to Professor Anne-Maria Pajari of the University of Helsinki's Department of Food and Nutrition, Finns currently eat only about a spoonful of legumes per day, mostly in that Thursday soup. Her team has studied what happens when this changes. In a six-week randomised controlled trial in healthy working-age men, Bäck et al. (2025) in the European Journal of Nutrition found that replacing part of the red and processed meat in an average Finnish diet with legumes reduced blood LDL cholesterol and increased fibre intake. Finland's updated nutrition recommendations from 2024 suggest around one decilitre of legumes a day. In other words, the university's own researchers are already making the case for more plant-based meals.
Gloria Vosu, PBC Aalto Coordinator, says:
It was brilliant to be in the room for the Helsinki launch. The students there are ready to get going, and we are looking forward to working side by side with them. Having two campaigns in Finland means we can learn from each other and share what works.
The first steps for PBC Helsinki are to recruit volunteers and start holding regular meetings. Soon after, the focus will shift to preparing concrete asks of the university's catering operators. The team may work on this together with the Aalto University campaign, because the Finnish catering system is unusual in a Nordic context as it serves very large quantities of food, is heavily subsidised, and includes many student-run restaurants. There is already a vegan restaurant nearby called Kipsari, a reminder that plant-based dining has a foothold in the area.
The PBC central team will also support the campaign by helping to form a coalition of institutional actors in Finland. The coalition would back catering operators in moving to plant-based or plant-forward catering.
Asta Dahlqvist, Chairperson of Plant-Based Campus, says:
Launching a second campaign in Finland is a really exciting step for us. Finnish catering is built on large volumes and student-run restaurants, so there is a lot of potential here. We are looking forward to supporting PBC Helsinki and PBC Aalto as they build something together."
If you are a student or staff member at the University of Helsinki, fill out the form (here) to get involved with PBC Helsinki, join another 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.
