Is Oat Milk Bad For The Environment?

Oat milk is officially the UK's favourite plant milk, but is it actually any better for the planet than dairy? We've broken it down across carbon emissions, water, and land use so you can see exactly how it stacks up.

The new wave of plant milk

The environmental impact of dairy farming is becoming increasingly well-known and researched. As an industry it produces around 2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases per year. That's at least double as much as the entire global aviation industry.

A significant portion of this is methane gas, which has up to 80x the warming effect of carbon dioxide. As a result, more and more people are switching to plant-based dairy alternatives to reduce their carbon footprint.

Oat is the UK's favourite plant-based milk variety, but is it any better for the environment?

Just how bad is dairy for the environment?

To work out whether oat milk is "good" or "bad" for the environment, we first need to look at the impact of dairy so we can make a relative judgement. We'll break all the figures down on a per litre basis for easy comparison, across three main indicators: carbon emissions, water usage, and land usage.

Those are the figures for dairy milk. Now let's see how oat milk compares.

How does oat milk compare to dairy milk?

The good news is that oat milk has a much lower environmental impact than dairy milk across all three indicators.

So is oat milk good or bad for the environment?

While oat milk isn't perfect and still produces some carbon emissions, it is vastly better for the environment than dairy milk. By switching from dairy to oat milk, you're making a significant positive change.

On top of the three indicators above, farming oats doesn't cause significant damage to soil or natural ecosystems, especially when organic and sustainable practices are used.

Dairy farming is a different story.

Ammonia emissions degrade surrounding soils and reduce air quality, while manure runoff pollutes waterways, creating oxygen-depleted dead zones that wipe out aquatic life. The knock-on effects extend to biodiversity loss across local ecosystems, and pose real risks to human health, too.

Environmental impact of other plant-based milks

There isn't one plant milk that leads in every category, so it's difficult to crown a single "most sustainable" option.

Almond contributes slightly fewer greenhouse gases than oat, but relies on heavy water usage that puts pressure on already water-scarce regions.

Rice milk actually emits more CO2 than oat due to methane produced in rice paddies.

Soy is arguably one of the strongest all-rounders, with low emissions, low land use, and the lowest water use of any plant milk, but it suffers from a bit of a public image problem.

Here's how they compare side by side.