By Mila Maltby, Sidwell Friends School
When you walk down the milk aisle in your local grocery store, there are often rows and rows of plant-based alternative options: almond, oat, soy, and coconut, just to name a few. You might wonder, why not just drink cow’s milk? One reason is the significant environmental impact of the production and consumption of cow’s milk. Every day, farmers tend to approximately 270 million cows just to produce milk and other dairy products. Dairy cows and their manure emit large amounts of greenhouse gases: around 18% of all GHG emissions worldwide — more than the entire transport sector, which includes automobiles, trains, ships, and planes. Additionally, cow manure and fertilizers often degrade nearby local water sources. Finally, dairy farming and feed production areas are often created by destroying ecologically important areas such as forests, wetlands, and prairies. Below is a summary of the pros and cons of various plant-based alternatives.
ALMOND MILK:
Almond milk is one of the most popular alternatives, however, there are a few issues with its production. One is extreme water usage; a single glass of almond milk takes 130 pints of water to produce! Around 80% of almonds cultivated for milk production in the US are grown in California, putting stress on the already arid land, often leading to the exacerbation of heatwaves and wildfires. This sudden demand for almond milk has also drastically increased bees’ workload in pollination, something connected to a record 50 billion commercial bee deaths.
COCONUT MILK:
Since coconuts can only be grown in tropical climates, the high demand for them has led to the rapid destruction of rainforests as well as the exploitation of workers in the coconut milk industry. Native rainforest tree species are being cut down in favor of coconut tree plantations, diminishing overall biodiversity. For example, in Indonesia from 2007 to 2014, rainforests were clearcut at a rate of three acres per minute. Moreover, coconut milk manufacturers often resort to illegal and cruel animal labor practices — monkeys are chained to posts and forced to scale trees to shake off coconuts, for example — in order to increase milk production.
SOY MILK:
Soy milk is a great plant-based option on many fronts: it is naturally high in protein, it is similar to cow’s milk in terms of natural hormones and vitamins, and it is generally sustainable. The only major downside is that soy is grown in mass quantities to feed livestock around the world, so parts of the Amazon Rainforest have been burned down to create soy farms. An easy way to avoid this issue is to buy soy milk made from soybeans grown in the United States or Canada.
OAT MILK:
The classic. The fan fave. Oat milk has a lot going for it. Oats are grown in cooler climates — primarily the northern US and Canada — so farming them does not cause massive deforestation in developing countries. Oats are also fairly easy and time-efficient to cultivate and do not require as much water as their counterparts. They also require 80% less land than almonds and emit far fewer GHGs. The only significant drawback to this miracle milk is that the mass-produced, monoculture plant is sprayed with a pesticide containing glyphosate — a potential carcinogen — just before harvesting. Fortunately, many oat milk brands, including Oatly, use certified glyphosate-free oats.
Although there are some serious drawbacks to certain plant-based alternatives, the dairy milk industry is rapidly degrading our Earth; any plant-based milk is superior to dairy milk! Yet if you want to drink the most environmentally friendly milks, try soy or oat!
Sources
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/28/what-plant-milk-should-i-drink-almond-killing-bees-aoe
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/07/honeybees-deaths-almonds-hives-aoe
https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/dairy#:~:text=Dairy%20cows%20and%20their%20manure,prairies%2C%20wetlands%2C%20and%20forests.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/magazine/palm-oil-borneo-climate-catastrophe.html
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