Cheese vs Milk: carbon footprint
Cheese23.88kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Milk3.15kg CO₂e / kg
Cheese or Milk? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Cheese runs about 23.88 kg CO₂e a kilo. Milk runs 3.15.
Cheese is the heavier choice, about 7.6× Milk.
Swap Cheese for Milk and you cut about 20.73 kg a kilo, near 87% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 121 km drive in a diesel car.
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.