Client Case Study

Blog Authors: Joel Bonales Revuelta, Sustainability Analyst and Tess Konnovitch, Scientific Marketing Manager

As we focus on food and agriculture this month, we're revisiting a landmark ISO-certified life cycle assessment conducted by EarthShift Global for the Good Food Institute that puts hard numbers on one of the food industry's most pressing questions: how much does switching to plant-based meat actually matter for the environment?

The answer, it turns out, is quite a lot.

What the Study Measured

This is one the most comprehensive open-access LCAs of plant-based meat to date. The study compared three plant-based meat recipes against beef, pork, and chicken across 18 environmental impact categories — from greenhouse gas emissions and land use to water consumption, marine pollution, and fine particulate matter. All comparisons were made on a one-kilogram basis, cradle to manufacturing gate, using real-world commercial-scale data from plant-based meat and ingredient manufacturers.

The Key Finding

On average, plant-based meat has 89% less environmental impact than animal-based meat across all 18 categories evaluated. Breaking that down by protein type, plant-based meat has 91% lower impacts than beef, 88% lower than pork, and 71% lower than chicken.

These results held up across different allocation methods, uncertainty analyses, and crop geographies — meaning the environmental advantage of plant-based meat is consistent and robust, not a product of favorable assumptions.

Why Animal Meat Has Such High Impacts

The study found that animal husbandry accounts for the majority of global warming impacts of meat production. The main drivers are feed production, enteric fermentation (methane from cattle digestion), manure management, and housing operations. Importantly, the animal systems modeled here represent highly optimized U.S. intensive farming — suggesting that real-world global impacts are often considerably higher.

Where Plant-Based Meat Can Still Improve

Key improvement opportunities identified include transitioning manufacturing to renewable energy, optimizing fractionation and extrusion processes, and revisiting ingredient choices. Coconut oil, for example, makes up just 4% of a recipe but was identified as the top contributor to global warming impacts and a key driver of land use — a meaningful formulation opportunity for manufacturers working to reduce their footprint further.

What This Means for Your Business

For food brands, ingredient suppliers, and retailers working toward science-based sustainability targets, this study provides exactly the kind of impartial, peer-reviewed data needed to make informed decisions. LCA data can support supplier management, product development, regulatory compliance, and environmental claims — but only when the underlying analysis is rigorous and transparent.

If your organization is ready to understand and reduce the environmental footprint of your products, EarthShift Global can help. We conduct ISO-certified life cycle assessments and sustainability consulting for food, agriculture, and consumer goods companies of all sizes.

Book a free 30-minute consultation to talk through your sustainability goals and find out how LCA can work for your business.

Sources

This study is publicly available through both the Good Food Institute and EarthShift Global. GFI's resource page hosts the complete ISO-certified LCA report, a technical summary, a policy action paper, and a marketing summary tailored to different audiences. GFI has also published two interactive dashboards, and allow you to download the underlying data and build custom figures. A recorded webinar walking through the findings is also available below.

About the Authors

Joel Bonales Revuelta is a Sustainability Analyst at EarthShift Global, based in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico. Each EarthShift Global project is led by experienced sustainability professionals who bring deep technical expertise and real-world industry knowledge to every engagement.

Joel specializes in life cycle assessment, carbon footprinting, and impact evaluation with particular depth in the food and agriculture sector. He served as the lead LCA practitioner on the Good Food Institute's comparative life cycle assessment of plant-based and animal-based meats — the study summarized in this post — where he was responsible for conducting the full ISO-certified LCA. His broader food and agriculture LCA experience includes multiple studies on palm oil and soybean oil systems, giving him firsthand insight into the environmental complexities of global agricultural supply chains.

He holds a bachelor's degree in environmental sciences and a master's in sustainability sciences from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), drawing on an interdisciplinary background in biology, geography, political science, economics, and engineering. His master's research focused on environmental and economic assessment of a waste-to-energy system using orange peel feedstock, and his publications include an LCA-based evaluation of orange production and a literature review of LCAs on forest-derived solid biofuels. Prior to joining EarthShift Global, Joel worked at SAMBITO - Soluciones Ambientales Totales, an Ecuador-based environmental consulting firm, conducting life cycle inventories and impact evaluations for clients across multiple industries.

Tess Konnovitch is the Scientific Marketing Manager at EarthShift Global, where she leads the communication of life cycle assessment insights across global audiences. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Science and Biology and an M.S. in Computational Biology, and brings a background that bridges ecology, quantitative analysis, and science communication. 

She joined EarthShift Global in 2022 as a Data Visualization Specialist and was promoted into marketing leadership, blending scientific rigor, visual design, and clear messaging to ensure complex sustainability analyses resonate with decision-makers. In this project, Tess supported the translation of the GFI study's findings into accessible data visualizations and communications — helping make one of the most comprehensive open-access LCAs to date legible to a broad range of stakeholders. Tess is also a course instructor at EarthShift Global and has spoken on LCA communication and data visualization at ACLCA, ISSST, and the LCA Institute.