Sweden: Malmö aims to become all-organic

Malmö has set itself a target that all the food procured by the city and served in schools, hospitals and other City of Malmö institutions and venues will be organic by 2020, Natural Product News reports. Malmö's commitment to being an all-organic city is part of its 100% sustainable purchasing policy, approved by the city assembly in 2010. "Everyone in Malmö has the right to good food", as stated by policy, is turned into a practical objective by adopting Sweden’s Eat S.M.A.R.T. model which combines health and environment goals without increasing costs.

Eat S.M.A.R.T. was developed by the Institute of Public Health in Stockholm, and stands for smaller amount of meat, minimizing intake of empty calories, an increase in organic, right sort of meat and vegetables and transport efficiency. By following the model, the City of Malmö aims to decrease greenhouse emissions by 40% (from 2002 levels) by 2020 as well as being an all-organic food purchaser. Gunilla Andersson, project manager at the city’s environmental strategy division, said that Malmö is already 40% organic in its food purchasing and this year will spend €8 million on organic food and drink on behalf of city institutions. The full article is available here http://www.naturalproductsonline.co.uk/
 

According to Statistics Sweden, organic products accounted for about 4% of all sales of food and non-alcoholic beverages in Sweden in 2012, Organic World reports. This share is almost the same as the share of organic products in 2011. However, the sales value decreased by around 4%. Sales of organics amounted to €904m in 2012; and the per-capita consumption was 95.3 euros. More information is available here: http://www.organic-world.net