Table 3.

Water use for plant-based milks, relative to dairy milk

Percentages represent the magnitude of plant-based milk water use relative to dairy milk, e.g., in Ercin et al. [79], the estimated blue water footprint of soymilk was 88% lower than that of cow’s milk. Shading indicates whether plant milk water use was higher (orange) or lower (blue) compared to cow’s milk. Comparisons are made on a volume basis (e.g., per liter of milk) unless indicated otherwise (e.g., per gram of protein). See Supplemental Tables S8–S9 for absolute values

^aStudy did not include cow’s milk, so we compared plant milk(s) to the weighted global average cow’s milk estimate from Mekonnen and Hoekstra (2010)

^bAverage of conventional UHT, organic UHT, conventional non-UHT, and organic non-UHT cow’s milk; average of conventional and organic soymilk

^cCow’s milk from Sweden, oat milk from Germany

^dCow’s milk from Sweden, oat milk from Sweden