My carbon footprint: sometimes it’s just about meat and dairy

Here’s the thing.

I opened the fridge on Sunday morning – ever so slightly bleary from the night before, I fully admit – and there it was. Yoghurt.

The fridge seems like the obvious place for it, you may be thinking and you’d be right. My issue is that it wasn’t supposed to be there at all. And it wasn’t the first time – not even the first time this week.

I have rebellion in the sustainability ranks ladies and gentleman, in the form of dairy-loving children and a facilitator of a husband. Sure it was organic, sure it was in a glass jar that would soon be returned to be washed, refilled and redistributed. But we are trying to get as close to plant-based as we can right now. Or at least some of us are.

I almost swerved talking about this here. I’ve set our stall out as unreservedly eco-ambitious. Our aim is to be as environmentally sustainable as we possibly can be, at all times, while living a normal life. But now here they are with their yoghurt, and we surely can’t claim anything of the sort. I nearly tore a strip off him indoors. After all, slashing dairy and meat intake is the biggest and best way to reduce our environmental impact.

Just swapping out one more red-meat based meal once a week would cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50 million tonnes, the equivalent of taking 16 million cars off the road.

Even the lowest impact, highest welfare meat produced in the most regenerative way, has a far greater detrimental effect than the least sustainably produced fruit or veg according to, for example, a study of 38,700 farms across 119 countries published in 2018.

So this is a really important one to get right and, critically, to keep getting right. Or at least to keep coming back to with a bit more oompf. A bit more commitment.

At which point the other half suggests I’ve gone a bit bunny boiler again and that its impossible to do this perfectly all the time. And anyway, what’s wrong with the occasional yoghurt really?

Then he muttered something about burning out but I was too busy lamenting the lactose and furiously checking there wasn’t a doorstep full of dairy on its merry way to us the following morning to catch it all.

He’s right. Of course he is.

This isn’t the first time we’ve “failed badly”, and it certainly won’t be the last. The idea that we are, or that anybody could be, perfectly realising whatever ideal way of life we pursue is, of course, nonsense. No matter what the ranks of Insta narcissists would have us believe.

The point isn’t whether or not we are infallibly delivering on our green aspirations, the world will tell you, its that we’re all giving it our very best effort in a bid to save our own skins if absolutely nothing else.

There is absolutely no doubt that guilt is not the vehicle to deliver the long-term behavioural changes we are being urged to embrace at every turn. It has to be about deep-rooted, genuine empowerment.

My slight concern though, is that most of us think we’re doing ok on the eco front when we’re really not, lulling us into a false sense of security and potentially dampening our appetite for further change. The last survey data I saw on the subject suggested 60 per cent of Britons believe we are living reasonably sustainably. Which simply can’t be accurate.

That 60 per cent figure also means it’s more likely than not that our household is among the great deluded. Hence why the yoghurt has been niggling at me far more than it should. And why I need to get a grip.

I get that the kids enjoy it. And I get that yoghurt is still such a rarity in our house that its a real treat when they get it.

The basis of the flexitarian diet is a lot less meat and dairy, and of better quality, but sometimes it’s just about those things. At some point, life has to just be easy, maybe even a bit of fun if it is going to be sustainable in every sense.

I can’t deny there’s another little eco-anxious voice in there somewhere screaming that we haven’t got time for reassurances. That we need to bite the bullet, the whole thing. And the next one, and the next one after that.

I don’t know where the balance lies. I’m not sure anyone does. So while I’m not about to round on the four-year-old for his love of dairy, I’m also not going to add it back into the basket anytime soon.

I might try to breathe out a bit more though. And maybe give the navel-gazing a rest.