Estimate the annual carbon and water footprint of your meat eating from weekly amounts — ESTIMATES using stated average factors, which vary by farming system and region.
ESTIMATES: factors are averages and vary by farming system, feed and region. Adjust the advanced factors to match a local source if you have one.
Annual CO2e (kg)
How to use this tool
Estimate each meat in kg per week — a typical steak is about 0.2 kg, a chicken breast about 0.17 kg.
The defaults are widely used average factors; advanced users can edit them to match a local study.
Annual CO2e is the headline; water use shows a second, often larger, hidden cost.
Set beef to zero and see how much of the total it was — beef usually dominates even in small amounts.
Formula & worked example
Eating 0.3 kg beef, 0.1 kg lamb, 0.3 kg pork and 0.5 kg poultry a week gives 27 kg CO2e a week, about 1,404 kg a year.
Limitations — read this before you rely on it
Footprint factors are averages that vary hugely with farming system, feed, transport and region, and published estimates for beef in particular span a wide range. Treat all results as estimates for comparison, not measurements of your own food.
Frequently asked questions
Cattle live longer, eat more feed, need more land and produce methane while digesting, so each kilogram carries far more emissions than poultry.
No. They are estimates from average factors. Grass-fed, grain-fed, local and imported meat differ, sometimes a lot.
The factors are mainly farm and production footprints. Cooking, packaging and shopping trips are small by comparison and not included.
A mature tree absorbing roughly 21 kg CO2 a year. Planting is not instant offsetting — a sapling takes years to reach that rate.
Cutting beef and lamb first gives the biggest saving per kilogram, before worrying about smaller changes to pork or poultry.