Milk, whole, 3.5 % fat, Denmark

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Background of emission factor

The emission factor of milk represents the greenhouse gas emissions from its production up to the wholesale stage, including the climate impact of packaging. As an animal-based product, milk has a significant footprint because dairy cows emit large amounts of methane during digestion.

Emission factor category

Emission factors for food show how much emissions are produced by different food products during their life cycle. On average, plant-based foods have a lower emission factor than animal-based foods. Around a third of global CO2 emissions come from the food production chain.

Milk, whole, 3.5 % fat

Emission factor category / Subcategory	Food and drink
Country	Denmark
Organization	CONCITO
Emission factor	0,65 kg/kg
CO2 / CO2 equivalent	CO2e
Quality of the emission factor
Updated	2024
Source	OpenCO2net/ The Big Climate Database
More information	Big climate database id: Ra00341. Emission factor represents the gradle-to-retail gate. Functional unit is kg of product as bought from store or wholesaler, including packaging etc. It is based on consequential LCA method. All steps to the wholesaler or supermarket and storage there is included. For packaging, the end use of the packaging is also included, e.g. recycling of bottles or incineration of plastic for cogeneration. Agriculture: 308.2 g CO2e/kg, Indirect land use change: 78.04 g CO2e/kg, Food processing: 100.74 g CO2e/kg, Packaging: 82.42 g CO2e/kg, Transport: 78.47 g CO2e/kg, Retail: 0.24 g CO2e/kg. It has been assumed that the food processing industry is located in Denmark. Input of farm milk and cream production taken from the LCA Food DK database (Nielsen et al. 2003). Other flows for manufacturing taken as the arithmetic average of several studies (Hospido et al. 2003; Djekic et al. 2014; González-García et al. 2013b). Retail is modelled assuming the following storage: Cooled.

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Quality of emission factor

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