Veganism and the Environment

If you eat food, your diet is the single largest component of your personal environmental footprint. And no part of the food system causes more damage than animal agriculture.

The numbers

14.5%

of global greenhouse gas emissions from livestock

FAO, 2013

77%

of agricultural land used for livestock

Poore & Nemecek, 2018

83%

of farmland that can be freed if world goes vegan

73%

reduction in food carbon footprint from going vegan

Oxford, 2018

Greenhouse gases

Animal agriculture contributes to climate change through three primary gases:

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) — from deforestation to clear land for pasture and feed crops, and from fossil fuels used in farming operations.
Methane (CH₄) — from enteric fermentation in ruminants (cow burps) and from manure lagoons. Methane is 80× more potent than CO₂ over 20 years.
Nitrous oxide (N₂O) — from fertilisers and manure. N₂O is 265× more potent than CO₂ over 100 years.

A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.
, Poore & Nemecek, Science (2018)

Land use

This is perhaps the most staggering statistic: livestock and their feed crops occupy 77% of global agricultural land but provide only 18% of global calories and 37% of global protein. If the world shifted to a plant-based diet, we could feed everyone on just 25% of the land currently used for food.

The land freed up could be rewilded, allowing forests and wetlands to regenerate — which would naturally draw down massive amounts of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Environmental impact per 100g of protein

Metric	Plant-based	Omnivore
Greenhouse gases	0.4 kg CO₂e (lentils)	49.9 kg CO₂e (beef)
Land use	3.4 m² (lentils)	164 m² (beef)
Water use	56 L (lentils)	369 L (beef)
Water pollution	0.7 gPO₄eq (lentils)	10.7 gPO₄eq (beef)

Deforestation

The Amazon rainforest — the lungs of the planet — is being cleared primarily for cattle ranching and soy production for animal feed. Between 2001 and 2020, Brazil lost 70 million hectares of forest. Around 80% of Amazon deforestation is driven by beef production. Importantly, only 6% of global soy is directly consumed by humans; the rest goes to animal feed.

ℹ️ The soy myth

Many people assume vegans eat lots of soy and that soy farming is responsible for deforestation. In reality, vegans consume a tiny fraction of global soy — the vast majority (around 77%) is fed to livestock. Eating tofu directly from soy has a fraction of the environmental impact of eating a chicken fed on soy.

Water

Producing 1 kg of beef requires approximately 15,400 litres of water. Producing 1 kg of lentils requires around 900 litres. Animal agriculture accounts for 29% of global freshwater consumption. In water-stressed regions, this is an existential concern.

Ocean dead zones

Nitrogen and phosphorus from animal manure and synthetic fertilisers (used to grow feed crops) run off into rivers and oceans, causing algal blooms that deplete oxygen and kill marine life. There are currently over 500 ocean dead zones globally, covering an area larger than the United Kingdom.

Biodiversity

Animal agriculture is the leading driver of species extinction globally. The conversion of wild habitat to pasture and cropland has wiped out populations of insects, birds, and mammals that once thrived in those ecosystems. A 2021 analysis found that 86% of all terrestrial mammals are now either humans or livestock, with wild mammals making up just 4% of Earth's mammalian biomass.

Your carbon footprint savings

Switching to a vegan diet saves approximately 1.5 tonnes of CO₂e per year — equivalent to taking a small car off the road.

What difference does one person make?

A 2018 Oxford University study calculated that going vegan reduces an individual's food carbon footprint by up to 73%. The average vegan saves:

Approximately 1.5 tonnes of CO₂e per year
Around 1.1 million litres of water per year
Roughly 1,000 m² of land per year

💡 Beyond individual action

Individual dietary choices matter — but systemic change matters more. Lobbying for agricultural reform, plant-based subsidies, and mandatory environmental labelling on food products will have a far larger impact than individual choices alone.