By Olivia Critoph, Epigram Food Deputy Editor
Cows milk is incredibly harmful to the environment, requiring masses of land, water and fertilizer to produce. However, luckily due to an increase in the many dairy alternative (such as oat and almond milk) and the awareness of dairy’s impact on the environment, the demand for dairy products have fallen massively.
The switching to alternatives is generally more ethical, (arguably) healthier and ‘green’. An alternative such as almond milk is undoubtedly incredibly good for you being full of vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber. Furthermore you don’t cause any direct harm to an animal when procuring it! Despite these benefits, it is sadly one of the worst things for our plant.
Almonds are very detrimental to the environment, as reported by Alex Park and Julia Lurie, 1.1 gallons of water is needed to grow one little almond. Additionally, 82% of almonds are grown in california, which is now entering its fourth year of record breaking drought. Due to the lack of water in the region, farmers continuously need to drill either deeper, or new wells, to access new water supplies, further depleting the already bare supply.
The drilling of these new wells is incredibly costly for farmers, usually amounting to around 1 million pounds. However, according to Tom Philpott farmer are making 2.1 billion pounds a year due to such a high demand in areas such as Asia and the United States. With such a high rewards it's no surprise these farmers continue to grow the nut.
Since 2000, farmers have had to triple how many almonds they reap to meet the high demand. This coupled and with such expensive costs of production mean almond milk suppliers can charge consumers expensive prices. For example, sainsburys own brand cows milk costs 48p/litre, where as alpro charges around £1.70 per litre of almond milk. Meaning this nut is not only being costly on California's water supply, but also incredibly costly for the consumer.
So if you’re a regular almond drinker due to environmental concerns, then there are some other more environmentally friendly alternatives which may be more beneficial. All other non-dairy milk alternatives seem to be better than almond milk. However, the milk which requires the least water, energy and pesticides, thus being the least ecologically damaging, seems to be coconut milk.
Though it seems in general much more research needs to be carried out to review how these new alternatives are really affecting the plant.
Feature image: Unsplash/Rawpixel
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