Beef (from dairy cows) vs Cheese: carbon footprint
Beef (from dairy cows) or Cheese? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Beef (from dairy cows) runs about 33.3 kg CO₂e a kilo. Cheese runs 23.88.
Beef (from dairy cows) is the heavier choice, about 1.4× Cheese.
Swap Beef (from dairy cows) for Cheese and you cut about 9.42 kg a kilo, near 28% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 55 km drive in a diesel car.
Beef (from dairy cows): Cows and sheep burp methane and need a lot of land and feed, which is why red meat towers over everything else here.
Cheese: Same cows, same methane. Milk and cheese carry it in every glass and slice.
Per-kilo numbers skip portion size and how the food was farmed, so take them as the shape of things, not the last word.
More match-ups
Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.