Milk vs Pork: carbon footprint

Milk3.15kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Pork12.31kg CO₂e / kg

Milk or Pork? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.

Milk runs about 3.15 kg CO₂e a kilo. Pork runs 12.31.

Pork is the heavier choice, about 3.9× Milk.

Swap Pork for Milk and you cut about 9.16 kg a kilo, near 74% off.

Per kilo, that gap is a 54 km drive in a diesel car.

Milk: Same cows, same methane. Milk and cheese carry it in every glass and slice.

Pork: Cows and sheep burp methane and need a lot of land and feed, which is why red meat towers over everything else here.

Per-kilo numbers skip portion size and how the food was farmed, so take them as the shape of things, not the last word.

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Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.