There’s no escaping plant-based milk these days. Visit any major supermarket and you’re likely to find more than three types on the shelf.
Entering this popular alternative market is a new plant-based milk, and it claims to be the most sustainable dairy alternative yet. And it's available in Original, Barista and Unsweetened editions. What is it? Well, perhaps surprisingly, it's potato milk.
Created by academic, Professor Eva Tornberg, at Lund University, DUG is the name of the latest plant-based milk to challenge oat milk’s crown. Produced in Sweden, and now available to buy in shops in the UK and online, like most plant-based milks, it is created from an emulsion of the plant-based product - in this case potatoes - and rapeseed oil.
But what are the environmental credentials of potatoes? Well according to DUG, they’re outstanding. The company’s website states that growing potatoes is twice as efficient as growing oats per square metre, and that potato milk has a lower carbon footprint than any other plant-based milk, clocking in at a tiny 0.27kg CO2 per litre.
This, and other factors, really does make it look like that this potato alternative is king of the options. For example, around 80 per cent of Almond milk is grown and produced in California, an American state well-known for its droughts. This makes almond milk’s high water production values - 120 litres to produce just one glass - terrible for the local environment. Even though its carbon footprint is a creditable 0.7kg CO2 per litre.
Meanwhile, oat milk averages 0.9kg CO2 per litre. What about soy? Equally, soy milk has had a very rocky relationship with environmentalists. With a low CO2 per kg and low water use, on paper soy is very sustainable. But due to its use for feeding dairy and livestock, soy production has led to vast areas of the Amazon rainforest being cleared, destroying vital ecosystems in the process.
So, next time you're shopping, why not give potato milk a try. DUG's the name.