Photo from https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable/#:~:text=Livestock%20are%20responsible%20for%2014.5,more%20methane%20over%20their%20lifetime.
Is the milk in your fridge truly the best option or should you make the switch to a new “milk”?
Standing in the cold aisle of your local supermarket there is a multitude of options filling the shelves of the dairy aisle. Through the average consumer’s eyes, these milk substitutions have historically been only for those with lactose intolerance or hardcore activists. However, more recently, milk substitutions have become more popular among a variety of people and are no longer reserved for a specific lifestyle.
In my house, milk was always a necessity, and my family of three went through gallons so quickly (mostly because of my love of cereal). With the constant need to buy more milk, we always opted for the cheaper and familiar option of 2% cow’s milk. As I was scrolling through social media earlier this year, I saw a post explaining the environmental impacts of cow’s milk compared to the impacts of popular substitutes such as Almond, Soy, and Oat “milk”. Before seeing that post, I wasn’t aware of the concept of greenhouse gas emissions or that minuscule choice can contribute to climate change. So I decided to learn more about where my food comes from, starting with my morning cereal.
What makes milk milk?
Milk is most generally defined as the liquid secreted from a mammal’s mammary glands, and quite frankly when it is described like that it is not very appetizing. It became even less appetizing when I began to research how cows milk is mass-produced. It is common for dairy farms to have anywhere from 1,000 – 5,000 cows but there are much larger farms having over 50,000 cows in order to meet the demand for dairy products.
Dairy farming has become incredibly mechanized and uses hormones, some of which were banned in other countries. This ability to produce milk more efficiently has caused an increase in annual milk production per cow from 2.3 tons in 1940 to 11.4 tons in 2016. The cows are milked multiple times every day for around a year or until they are too exhausted to produce any more milk and then the cows are often slaughtered to then be processed into ground beef.
How does cow’s milk impact our world?
The excessive number of cows is cause for concern due to cow waste emits the greenhouse gas, Methane which is a stronger GHG than CO2, and these Methane emissions make up for 4 percent of all greenhouse gas in the US. According to World Wild Life, “poor handling of manure and fertilizers can degrade local water resources. And unsustainable dairy farming and feed production can lead to the loss of ecologically important areas, such as prairies, wetlands, and forests.”
How about almond “milk”?
When I decided to shy away from dairy milk, the first substitute I tried was almond milk. Of course, almonds are not mammals so you do not milk them in the same sense you would milk a cow. Almonds are grown on farms like any other crop, and to create the “milk” we can pour into a glass the almonds are mixed with high volumes of water and ground into a pulp, that when filtered, is presented as a milk substitute. In regards to sustainability, the almond substitution can be a tricky call because of the excessive amounts of water needed to grind the almonds. California grows a large majority of the almonds but also suffers from severe droughts so the use of approximately 15 gallons in order to produce 16 almonds is a call for concern and still not the most sustainable option.
What about oat “milk”?
The oat alternative has been popular and favorited among many alternative milk drinkers. Oat milk has been said to be much more sustainable than conventional cow’s milk and the aforementioned almond alternative due to its relatively low stats comparing GHG emissions, land use, and water use according to Poore & Nemecek. However, a popular producer called Oatly has been associated with large accounts of deforestation in order to produce more of the beverage, which many consumers find delegitimizing to the sustainability claims the company profits off of. Many posts have been made to social media suggesting oat milk lovers make their own, presenting itself as a much more sustainable option, however requiring consumers to put in more effort than before required.
Poore & Nemecek’s data comparing the emissions, land use, and water usage between different milk substitutes.
What is the best option?
With all of my own research (involving quite a few boxes of cereal), I find it hard to make the adjustment of switching to a milk alternative. Poore & Nemecek have shown both pros and cons of many “more sustainable” options. As a consumer, the best thing you can do is find out what option best fits into your lifestyle and is beneficial to the climate change issues you personally find most important. As a consumer, I find it so hard to make choices that I know might not be the best for the environment but I continue to learn more and understand that even just trying out something new, like macadamia nut milk, can and does make a difference.
Blog post by Gwendalyn Waggoner