Almond milk is significantly better for the environment than dairy milk in most categories, but it’s not the cleanest option among plant-based milks. Its carbon footprint is the lowest of any major milk alternative, producing just 0.7 kg of CO2 equivalents per liter compared to 3.15 kg for dairy. The catch is water: almond milk uses roughly the same amount of water as cow’s milk, and most of that water is drawn from drought-stressed regions in California.
Carbon Emissions: Where Almond Milk Wins
On greenhouse gas emissions alone, almond milk looks excellent. Data compiled by Our World in Data puts it at 0.7 kg CO2 equivalents per liter, making it the lowest-emission milk on the standard comparison chart. For context, here’s how common milks stack up per liter:
- Dairy milk: 3.15 kg CO2-eq
- Rice milk: 1.18 kg CO2-eq
- Soy milk: 0.98 kg CO2-eq
- Oat milk: 0.90 kg CO2-eq
- Almond milk: 0.70 kg CO2-eq
That means switching from dairy to almond milk cuts your milk-related carbon footprint by roughly 78%. Oat and soy milk get you most of the way there too, but almond edges them out on this single metric.
The Water Problem
Water is where almond milk’s environmental story gets complicated. A single California almond requires about 12 liters (3.2 gallons) of water to grow. Scaled up to a full liter of almond milk, the water footprint lands in roughly the same range as dairy milk, according to the World Resources Institute. That’s a striking number for a product often marketed as the eco-friendly choice.
What makes it worse is where that water comes from. About 80% of the world’s almonds are grown in California’s Central Valley, a region that has experienced repeated severe droughts. Almond trees are perennial crops that need water year-round, even during dry years when surface water is limited. Growers have increasingly relied on deeper groundwater pumping to keep orchards alive, and that pumping has lowered aquifer levels and, in some areas, degraded the quality of the remaining groundwater by pulling up saltier water from deeper sediment layers.
The World Resources Institute notes that almond milk’s water impact may actually be worse than dairy’s when comparing almonds grown in water-stressed California against dairy produced in regions with more abundant water. Context matters: the same volume of water drawn from a drought-prone aquifer causes more ecological harm than the same volume taken from a water-rich area.
Land Use and Nutrient Pollution
On land use, almond milk performs well compared to dairy. All major plant milks use dramatically less land than cow’s milk because you skip the enormous acreage needed to grow animal feed. Among plant milks specifically, almonds and soy use less land than oat milk, which requires about 80% less land than dairy but more than its plant-based competitors. The differences between plant milks on land use are relatively small compared to the gap between any plant milk and dairy.
Dairy milk also generates far more nutrient runoff (nitrogen and phosphorus from manure and fertilizer) than plant-based alternatives. This runoff feeds algal blooms in waterways, depleting oxygen and killing aquatic life. Plant milks as a category produce substantially less of this kind of pollution, and almond milk is no exception. When researchers aggregated environmental impacts into a single composite score, dairy consistently ranked highest (worst), with all plant milks coming in well below it.
Impact on Bees
Almond farming has a unique environmental cost that other plant milks don’t share: its heavy dependence on commercial honeybee pollination. More than 75% of all managed honeybee colonies in the United States are trucked to California each spring to pollinate almond orchards. Beekeepers have reported significant bee deaths during and after almond bloom season.
Research into why has pointed to pesticide combinations used during flowering. Fungicides and insecticides applied individually at recommended rates may not be lethal to bees, but certain combinations become toxic. One study found that mixing a common insecticide with a common fungicide and a spray additive caused 30% mortality in adult honeybees at standard field application rates. Neither the insecticide nor the fungicide caused significant deaths on its own. This synergistic toxicity is a particular concern because almond bloom is exactly when bees are most exposed to whatever is being sprayed on the trees.
How Almond Milk Compares to Other Plant Milks
If you’re choosing between plant milks purely on environmental grounds, the picture is nuanced. Almond milk has the lowest carbon emissions but the highest water use among major plant alternatives. Soy milk has the lowest water consumption and land use but slightly higher emissions. Oat milk falls in the middle on emissions and water but uses more land than soy or almond.
No single plant milk “wins” across every environmental metric. But the gap between any plant milk and dairy is far larger than the gaps between plant milks. Switching from dairy to any plant-based alternative is the single biggest improvement you can make. After that, choosing between almond, oat, and soy is a matter of which environmental issue matters most to you. If carbon is your priority, almond milk is the best pick. If water scarcity concerns you, especially in the American West, soy or oat milk is the better choice.
One practical consideration: if you live in or care about water-stressed regions, the sourcing of your almond milk matters more than the global average numbers suggest. Almonds grown with efficient irrigation in water-abundant areas have a very different footprint than almonds from drought-hit California aquifers. Most almond milk on store shelves, however, is made from California almonds.