Going plant based
.1What exactly has been decided? That Springest will as much as possible not buy animal based foods anymore.
.2Why did Springest decide this? To lower our greenhouse gas emissions and get closer to Net Zero Carbon emissions as a company. Directly through our own actions, our supply chain, but also by influencing others by making it less normal to consume animals or do other things that harm our environment. See this Sputr discussion for more opinions and data about all of this. And he's a recent article with lots of linked scientific papers about the environmental benefits of a vegan diet .
.3Who decided this and how? The Resources & Budget role, by changing the pre approvedbudgets that there are for many things. Also by discussing with both Office Manager roles in Amsterdam and Berlin to see what the impact would be practically and for budget needed.
.4So what are the rules for food Springest buys? Before the decision to not buy animal foods, since ~2014 we've had this as description of our food budget "As little things as possible with added sugar, no cookies or sultana, only organic animal products (meat, dairy etc)". For the current one, see the pre approved budget sheet and search for lunch.
.5What kind of precedent is there for this? For food we already had specific limits, see the rules question above. We also limit flying by only supporting train travel when possible, and instead of lease cars we use car sharing services like Greenwheels and Car2go. We also prefer buying learning products from providers that are on Springest, don't support smoking (areas), buy a specific Co2 neutral fairtrade coffee, nudge people to take the stairs and make regular walks, prefer to invest in a mediation room instead of more gaming devices, banned lots of software tools even though they might work better for an individual, prohibit many workplace behaviors through Holacracy, etc etc. With all of these things, exceptions can and have been made on request. They also all constantly change. But we do indeed take an idealistic / progressive stance on almost everything, even over people's individual wishes, because we want to have a positive impact.
.6Can I not eat what I want? Yes you can, but we will not pay for some things, believing that it's better for everyone's health and wellbeing now and in the future.
.7What are my rights to not take part in this? Letting Springest pay for your lunch is optional. You can disable it and buy your own lunch, and maybe renegotiate your salary as the lunch is of course part of your benefits.
.8How can the plant based decision be changed? Like with anything, you can find the right role to be tasked with a requests. Of course you can also process tensions in governance, see this flow chart for more tension processing help .
.9What about non vegan products like crisps, wine and leather? We will try to avoid them, but we will focus on having the biggest impact and practicality, over being fundamentalistic or strict. In practice this likely means we will buy products with small amounts of animals in them, if alternatives are much more expensive or hard to come by or untasty.
.10Has Springest thought of the health impact? Yes we did consider this. First of all, Springest provides only a part of your daily food intake: let's say 1/3, as most people have 3 meals and we only cater lunch. So the impact cannot be more than 1/3, and on top of that most animal product is eaten during dinner so it might be even less. Also, we will provide recipes and prepared foods to help with your nutritional intake. While it's by definition very hard to have scientific evidence for any diet , eating more fruits and vegetables is advised universally and replacing meat with them can therefore help.
.11Do you favor certain lifestyles / people over others? No, it's about the impact we have as an organisation, not about (groups of) people. But if people identify personally with something that Springest does not support, we understand it can feel like it goes against a certain person. While that is not the intention, we welcome the discussion and are OK with agreeing not to agree. We also accept that all our choices come at a cost, but massively prefer explicit / visible costs over implicit / invisible costs of not making choices.
.12Why did you not do a vote / invite more discussion? Ruben opened the discussion in a Friday Town Hall Meeting and invited questions then or later, based on this personal feelings on the topic. Based on the fact that 2 weeks later there were no direct questions, and especially because it seemed safe enough to try it out, and that many people were happy about the idea, we decided to put it in effect. Nonetheless, people felt excluded from the decision, wanted to be consulted or have more discussion about it. We preferred the speed, data drivenness (let's experiment to know what it's like instead of imagining it), and role based instead of consensus style of decision making. It could've been communicated / processed better by taking more time and showing the intermediate steps more transparently, and we've learned and improved already (this FAQ is a part of that).