New York City public schools, the country’s largest school system, will enforce a “meatless Monday” in its student lunches beginning this fall in an effort to improve health and curb environmental effects, the city announced. “People are going to look at this, and they’re going to start to emulate what the New York City schools are doing,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference on Monday. The initiative, which will impact 1,800 schools, follows a successful pilot program in Brooklyn involving 15 schools last year, the mayor said. “We had such overwhelmingly positive feedback that we decided this was the right thing to do,” said school chancellor Richard A. Carranza.

JGI/Tom Grill via Getty Images New York City public schools will enforce a “meatless Monday” in its student lunches beginning this fall.

Carranza touted the health benefits of a vegetarian meal, with studies finding that it reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. “It’s also good for the environment because it helps us reduce our carbon footprint and preserve essential resources including water,” he added. Mark Chambers, director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, called meat reduction “one of the single biggest ways individuals can reduce their environmental impact on our planet.” “Meatless Mondays will introduce hundreds of thousands of young New Yorkers to the idea that small changes in their diet can create larger changes for their health and the health of our planet,” he said in a release.