Did you know that despite a growing number of plant-based milk alternatives the production of cow milk has increased slightly over the last 5 years?

Did you know that the global production amounts to around 500 million metric tons per year?

Did you know that India consumes the most cow milk worldwide in absolute figures at a staggering 83 million metric tons (about 83 billion litres)?

In comparison – the figures across the JUMBO locations:

Area/CountryConsumption per year in metric tons (2021)
Europe23,900,000
United Kingdom6,280,000
Australia2,470,000
South Korea1,540,000
Taiwan471,000

Let’s compare the data for plant-based alternatives…

Environmental Impact of One Glass (200ml) of Different Milk Options:

Drinking 200 ml of cow milk every day for a year emits approx. 230kg CO2, this would be reduced to 73kg if you switched to soy milk or 65.7kg if you drank oat milk

Cow milk not only emits more than 2.5 times more CO2 than the next highest plant-based alternative (rice milk), it also requires significantly more land use and water

What about the nutritional value?

This varies depending on which brand/type you pick up, but cow milk tends to have a higher amount of protein.

So what would happen if a person switched their cow milk to for example soy milk just 50% of the time? The CO2 emission would be reduced to 151.5kg per year – saving 78.5kg CO2 and that is just one person!

Author: Mei Lin Ly, Senior Consultant

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