Almond milk rather than cow’s milk? An environmentally-friendly choice

water-needed-livestock

We already talk about the good alternative the almond milk is from a nutritional point of view (here). But do you know that drinking a dairy-free drink is also environmental-friendly?

Tgreenhouse effect food diethe cow milk production have an important impact on the greenhouse effect: if we compared the vegetarian diet including dairy-free products to the vegetarian diet with dairy-free products, even if they are organic products, the second “diet” has 10 times more important impact on greenhouse effect.

Among the greenhouse effects produced from the livestock, the methane released by the cows is 20 times more dangerous as the C02. Cows are responsible of 7% greenhouse effects releases on hearth.
The water consumption to produce cow milk is bigger than the production of a dairy-free drink. Indeed, in the first case it needs water to irrigate the crops (to feed the animal), also water for the livestock and finally water for the production (milking, packaging, transport …) This water is called: virtual water and said the water footprint of cow’s milk is higher than that of a dairy-free milk like almond milk. That is because virtual water that is used is more important. .

The water consumption to produce cow milk is bigger than the output of a dairy-free drink.

Agricultural area for each UK country by land use, June 2012

In England, the total used in agricultural area is almost 8.9 million hectares at 1st June 2010. This is a small reduction of 0.8% on the same period in 2009. Approximately 52% of this land is considered to be croppable, i.e. land currently under crops, bare fallow, temporary grass or horticulture. The rest is predominantly permanent grassland (either meadow/pasture land or rough grazing).

scotland.gov.uk

Choose to drink the EcoMil almond milk helps take care of yourself but also take care of the hearth.