Oat drink: carbon footprint per kg (about one litre)
Live factor value
0.566 kgCO2e per kg (about one litre)
Source: Agribalyse (ADEME/INRAE, France), 3.1 (revision 1). Factor set agribalyse-3.1-r1.
Oat drink sits well under the dairy milk in Agribalyse — the live figure is below, less than half the cow's-milk number in the same database. Oats grow in temperate climates without irrigation, and turning them into a drink is a milling-and-mixing process with none of the herd behind a litre of milk. It is not the floor of the drinks aisle — plain water, cola and the rice and soy drinks all sit lower — but against the thing it is bought to replace, the gap is real.
It is the one dairy alternative where the comparison is straightforward, because Agribalyse publishes both the oat drink and cow's milk, so the two can be read side by side without leaving the study. Our milk page carries the other half of that comparison from the same source.
Worked example
A one-litre carton of oat drink: 1 × 0.566 = 0.6 kgCO2e.
Measure your own with the free food calculator.
Frequently asked questions
- Is oat drink lower-carbon than cow's milk?
- In Agribalyse, yes — clearly so. Both figures come from the same study, so the comparison is like-for-like; see our milk page for the dairy side.
- How does oat compare with soy?
- Agribalyse publishes both, and they land close together at the low end. Either is far below dairy milk in the same database.