Lamb vs Milk: carbon footprint
Lamb39.72kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Milk3.15kg CO₂e / kg
Lamb or Milk? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Lamb runs about 39.72 kg CO₂e a kilo. Milk runs 3.15.
Lamb is the heavier choice, about 13× Milk.
Swap Lamb for Milk and you cut about 36.57 kg a kilo, near 92% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 214 km drive in a diesel car.
Lamb: 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.