Beef vs Milk: carbon footprint
Beef99.48kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Milk3.15kg CO₂e / kg
Beef or Milk? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Beef runs about 99.48 kg CO₂e a kilo. Milk runs 3.15.
Beef is the heavier choice, about 32× Milk.
Swap Beef for Milk and you cut about 96.33 kg a kilo, near 97% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 564 km drive in a diesel car.
Beef: Cows and sheep burp methane and need a lot of land and feed, which is why red meat towers over everything else here.
Milk: 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.