Once a week, I am offering up a tip or action or idea that we can all engage with to help reduce waste, use less materials and energy, help conserve species or habitats, and/or generally work towards living in ways that allow for more health and wellbeing for all aspects of the planet.
This week the green thought is about plant milks. Milk from cows is great. It has a lot of protein, a good source of vitamins, and has a lot of calcium and other nutrients that are very helpful to staying healthy. However, cows milk has some serious drawbacks. The biggest one is that it means keeping a lot of cows! Raising and maintaining cows requires a lot of resources from space to water to feed. On top of consuming all those resources, the cows themselves release a lot of greenhouse gases. All of this makes cows milk (and really any animal milk) pretty costly for the environment.
One solution is offered by plant milks, and since #WorldPlantMilkDay is on August 22 this seems like a great time to discuss these alternatives. Almond milk, oat milk, rice milk, and so many more options are available in most grocery stores, these days. This has not always been the case, but it means that we all have options! Plant milks require a lot fewer resources to produce as compared to animals milks in part because they cut out a huge step. To produce animal milk, plants have to be raised to feed the animal that produces the milk. By simply getting milk from plants, that removes the entire animal step. So, plant milks offer tons of health benefits, cause much less pollution, they eliminate any issue of animal cruelty, and they help reduce a driver of climate change by releasing much less greenhouse gas! All terrific for the human body and the environment! So, lets all go and experiment with the various plant milks and add them into our diets.
What do you think of these thoughts and the solution? Is this a step you will take? Do you have any other solution ideas?
Thank you for visiting my blog! Please check back in next week for another Green Thought Thursday!
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