Environment and sustainability

In January 2025, YouGov found 42% of UK consumers said that sustainability affects their household purchases ‘a fair amount’, with 26% saying ‘not very much’. Over the six year period of tracking there have been no notable shifts with these figures being relatively stable. Source
In May 2024, PwC found that consumers surveyed over 31 countires were prepared to pay an extra 9.7% for sustainably produced/sourced goods. Source
In 2021, YouGov published a survey on consumer willingness to pay more for environmentally friendly products. It found that in the UK, 57% of consumers agreed that they would pay more for environmentally friendly products, versus 24% of consumers who disagreed. Source

In October 2024, Alves et al, found that across 10 European countries, meat and meat products contributed to 40% of Green House Gas Emission (GHGE) and 53.1% of Land Use (LU). Dairy products contributed to 18.2% of GHGE and 13.7% of LU. Yet these products only made up 6.3% of all products consumed, including beverages. Source
In 2024, Our World in Data found that when land for livestock and land for crops for livestock are combined, this accounts for 80% of global agricultural land use. Source
A 2023 study from Oxford University found that eating less meat is like taking 8 million cars off the road. Source
In 2023, data from Statista found that cow's milk was, by far, the biggest contributor to green house gas emissions when compared to all plant milks. As an example, one liter of cow's milk produces 3.2KG of CO2 and uses 628 liters of water whereas the same amount of soy milk produces 1KG of CO2 and uses 28 liters of water. Source
In February 2022, Brown and Eisen found that if the world were to go vegan, therw woudl be a 68% fall in CO2 emissions by 2100. Source
A 2021 study from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Exeter found that meat production is to blame for 90,000 pollution-related deaths in China every year. Source

77% of the world’s farmland (and 85% of the farmland in the UK) is used to graze farmed animals or to produce crops to feed farmed animals. Source
Animal farming accounts for nearly 80% of greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector. Source [p. 112]
According to a 2019 Harvard University report, reforesting farmland which is currently used as grazing pasture in the UK would remove over 3,000 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, equal to offsetting nine years of current CO2 emissions from the whole UK economy. Source
In the EU over 60% of cropland is used to produce animal feed rather than food for human consumption. Source

A 2023 study from Sodexo found that 81% of students chose to eat vegan food when it's the default option on campus menus. Source
In 2018 the University of Oxford published the most comprehensive research yet into the impact of different foods. It concluded that moving from current diets globally to a diet that excludes animal products has transformative potential; reducing food’s land use by 76%, GHG emissions by 49%, acidification by 50%, eutrophication by 49% and scarcity-weighted freshwater withdrawals by 19%. Source
A study published in Environmental Research Letters found that eating a plant-based diet has three times more positive environmental impact than washing your clothes in cold water, four times more than hang-drying clothes or recycling, and eight times more than upgrading light bulbs. Source
32% of Brits believe the government should be promoting vegan and plant-based diets to address the current climate emergency. Source
We can always be more sustainable in our food choices, but a vegan diet is the most sustainable of all diets resulting in half the GHG emissions of 'conventional' diets. Source

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