Something I'm pondering as I drink my cappuccino this morning:

[kzeta@mastodon.social]

Something I'm pondering as I drink my cappuccino this morning:

I switched to oat milk because it's better for the environment than cow milk.

But my oat milk comes in plastic or plastic-coated containers.

A local farm sells its cow milk in reusable glass bottles. And because it's local, it doesn't need to be shipped as far as the oat milk. (Distance: 50 miles vs 350+ miles.)

So, taking packaging and transportation into account, is it better to buy the cow milk or the oat milk??

#AskFedi

[afewbugs@social.coop]

@kzeta On every environmental metric plant based milks score above dairy milks: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks Food miles and packaging tend to get more attention because they are most visible to consumers, but actually make up a relatively small proportion of the overall carbon footprint of animal products. The book How Bad Are Bananas has a good breakdown of the carbon footprints of various foods but may be a bit out of date by now

[afewbugs@social.coop]

@kzeta sorry to resurrect a zombie thread, but I finally found the graph I was looking for showing the relative impact to transport emissions for dairy and various other foods https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/what-is-the-climate-impact-of-eating-meat-and-dairy/index.html#:~:text=The%20chart%20below%20shows%20how%20much%20travel%20emissions%20contribute%2C%20on%20average%2C%20to%20the%20total%20greenhouse%20gas%20emissions%20per%20kilogram%20of%20different%20foods.

[afewbugs@social.coop]

@kzeta And it conveniently links to one with date for packaging too! https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local