Green Dilemmas: Cow’s milk vs. soy milk

By Julia Silverman

Pamplin Media Group, Jul 8, 2010, Updated Jul 27, 2010

Dairies: more brown than green

Ardent dairy proponents concede that cows are not Mother Nature’s best friends. They belch greenhouse gas-causing methane, and their poop contaminates local water sources. They tramp around and cause river erosion. And they eat and eat and eat – often animal feed treated with pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

Some cows are treated with antibiotics to bulk them up, says Natalie Reitman-White of Organically Grown, a Eugene fruit and vegetable wholesaler. The antibiotics get passed on to people, she says, who can develop a resistance to antibiotics.

Organic dairies – a growing Oregon industry – have fewer environmental impacts. They forswear the use of antibiotics and bovine-growth hormone and pledge to provide pastureland for the animals to graze.

Still, Cornell University studies showed that producing a kilogram of soybean milk uses less fossil fuel than producing a kilogram of cow’s milk.

Soybeans not so benign

Soybeans aren’t the greenest of products, either. When milk comes from a cow, it looks like it looks in the bottle, save for pasteurization. Soybeans need to be ground and processed before they start to become milk, and ingredients must be added – water, vitamins, sugars, and, especially, calcium. Some of those components may come from halfway around the world.

Demand for soybeans has shot up in recent years, and farmers in South America, backed by giant American corporations like Cargill and Monsanto, have responded by tearing out acres upon acres of Amazon rainforest to plant soybeans, leading to an enormous loss of biodiversity and carbon absorption. Soybeans need minimal tending, so the new fields haven’t even translated into many jobs.

Soybean farmers may use heavy amounts of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, Reitman-White says. All that fertilizer can run off into rivers and contribute to ocean dead zones, bad news for marine life.

Finally, soy milk cartons are tough and expensive to recycle, though they are accepted at the curbside locally. Cow’s milk cartons and jugs, on the other hand, are nearly universally recyclable. Or you can save them to make a vessel for the milk-carton boat races in next year’s Rose Festival.

Advantage: A tough call, but we’ll go with soy milk, unless you're talking about expensive organic milk raised locally and humanely. Then the balance tips to cow’s milk.