Veg.ac · Impact calculator

What does your plate

Pick your current diet and how long you'd commit to plant-based eating. The estimates below come from peer-reviewed lifecycle and food-system studies.

Your current diet

Time horizon

1 yr
1102550
95

Land animals spared

Mostly chickens — the species killed in the largest numbers.

200

Aquatic animals spared

Fish, shrimp, and bycatch you would otherwise have eaten or financed.

1.9k kg

CO₂-equivalent avoided

≈ 804 litres of petrol burned.

750k L

Water saved

≈ 5k days of household water use.

2.4k m²

Land freed for nature

≈ 0.48 football pitches.

130 m²

Forest spared

From land-use change driven by beef and feed soy.

360 kg

Grain freed for humans

Globally, ~77% of soy and ~36% of cereal grains feed livestock.

And your daily life

Lower blood pressure, lower LDL cholesterol, reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and several cancers.

More calculators

Different ways to see the same truth: small daily choices add up to enormous lifetime totals.

Per-meal swap

Swapping one beef-based meal for a bean-based one saves, on average:

  • ~50 kgCO₂e avoided
  • ~15,000 Lwater saved
  • ~64 m²land freed

Per-kg figures: Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science.

Since I went vegan

Pick a date and we'll show the running totals you've already saved.

Family / classroom / office

Multiply one omnivore year by your group size to see what a single year of collective change looks like.

Animals1.9k
CO₂e37k kg
Water15.0M L

Make the numbers real. Start the 7-day plan.

One new plant-based habit a day, built on the ingredients you already cook.

Sources & methodology

Per-omnivore-year baselines combine Poore & Nemecek (Science, 2018), FAO statistics, faunalytics estimates of animals killed per capita, and the Water Footprint Network. Diet multipliers approximate dietary impact relative to an average omnivore in a high-income country.

Numbers are rounded estimates intended for orientation, not precise accounting.

Key takeaways

  • One person eating plant-based for a year spares around 200 land animals plus dozens of fish, and cuts food emissions by about 60%.
  • Water saved per year of plant-based eating exceeds a typical household's yearly shower use.
  • Land freed up per person per year is roughly the size of a football pitch — reforestable if we choose.
  • The math is not marginal: it is the largest personal-lever climate action available to almost anyone.

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Frequently asked questions

Peer-reviewed data: Poore & Nemecek (Science, 2018) for emissions/land/water; USDA and FAO slaughter statistics for animal counts. Estimates are conservative — real impact is often larger when fish are counted.

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