In the U.K., teenagers are pouring milk onto the floors of grocery stores as part of an environmentalist trend to raise awareness about the horrors of the dairy industry. Videos of these “milk pours” are popping up on social media.
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“The dairy industry is incredibly environmentally destructive. The world’s top five meat and dairy corporations are now responsible for more GHG emissions than Exxon, Shell or BP,” the animal rights group Animal Rebellion tweeted Saturday. “We NEED a plant based future now.”
Related: Climate activists glued to a sculpture in Vatican Museum
Some of the videos show people pouring milk onto grocery aisles while another person holds a sign saying “Plant Based Future.”
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Milk pour sites have so far included London, Norwich, Manchester and Edinburgh. Animal Rebellion has tweeted about the loss of natural ecosystems caused by animal farming and asked for the U.K. government to “support farmers in an urgent transition to a plant based food system and allow the freed up land to be rewilded in order to restore wildlife populations.”
Cattle, champion methane producers, are the leading agricultural source of greenhouse gases. About 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the agricultural sector, according to a 2020 EPA estimate. Of course, dairy alternatives have their own problems. Almond farming is notorious for using huge amounts of water. Coconut milk production has been tied to exploiting monkeys for their labor, as investigated by PETA.
While many teenagers are passionate about the environment — after all, they’re the ones who will be living with repercussions of our current actions 50 years from now — having a self-righteous excuse to vandalize grocery stores is irresistible. Plus, it makes really cool videos for their social media accounts.
Unfortunately, it won’t be fat cats profiting from the dairy industry mopping up the aisles. Instead, that job will go to sales assistants who make an average of $10.19 USD per hour, according to Payscale.
Lead image via Pexels
