We don’t eat meat every day but we did consume 730 litres of milk each year, mainly for breakfast and in our coffee. I wanted to understand how much CO2 per litre that generated and found a great study specific to UK dairy farms; the figure is 1.23kg CO2 equivalent per litre.
Our goal was to reduce the CO2 emissions generated from breakfasts and hot drinks and also to eliminate over 200 single-use plastic bottles from possibly ending up in landfill.
With surprising ease, we switched our daily habit of making porridge with milk, to using water instead, and having Oat milk in our coffee. Oat milk production only generates one third of the 1.23kg/litre footprint of milk, at just 410grammes of CO2e per litre.
Another environmental benefit is that Oat milk comes in waxed cardboard cartons, although it is more expensive to buy, litre for litre, than dairy. We have reduced the amount we buy, compared to milk, but it does still end up costing about £100 per year more, though this is easily offset by the fuel savings we’ve made elsewhere (please see my previous posts on this).
We’ve found the additional cost to be worth it. We have achieved our goal of stopping buying 200 single-use plastic bottles a year, and have made an almost 90% reduction in our CO2e footprint by cutting out daily milk, from 900kg down to 112kg.
An unexpected side benefit is that we have found we now actually prefer our coffee made with oat milk and even porridge made with water is something your palette quickly adjusts to, so it has been a relatively easy lifestyle change to make.
