Our pets are our family: we love them, play with them, cuddle them, and feed them. They influence our lives every day by making us rush home after work, bring them along on a vacation, wake up at night because they feel lonely and whine. It’s not surprising then that we want the best for them.
The best includes feeding them the highest-quality food so they can live long and healthy lives. However, our choices of dog food influence not only the lives of our pets, but also the environment. According to a 2026 study by researchers from the University of Exeter and the University of Edinburgh, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, the environmental impact of dog food is far greater than we might imagine.
Environmental impact of dog food production
It is easy to think of a single bag of dog food as a minor purchase, but the cumulative impact is shocking: the production of dog food ingredients in the UK alone contributes to 0.9-1.3% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
On a global scale, the numbers become even more overwhelming. If we were to feed every dog in the world the same diet common in the UK, emissions from ingredient production would equal 59% to 99% of the entire commercial aviation industry. Further, according to an earlier, 2020 study, the global dog and cat food industry uses about 49 million hectares of agricultural land annually— an area twice the size of the UK.
The pawprint of red meat vs. plant-based food
Protein is the biggest cause of dog food’s significant environmental impact. According to the 2025 study by researchers at the University of Nottingham, there’s a major disparity between meat-based and plant-based dog foods. Over a nine-year adult life, a typical 20kg dog (e.g. Labrador) that eats a beef-based diet requires land equivalent to 57 football fields. On the other hand, the same dog on a plant-based diet would require only 1.4 fields. The GHG emissions disparity is just as staggering: beef-based diets produce 11 times more CO2-equivalent emissions than the plant-based diet (32 kg CO2 vs. 2.8 kg CO2). Beef-based diets also cause 16 times more water pollution (eutrophication) than plant-based diets.
Meanwhile, poultry-based diets are less impactful than red meat-based diets, but more harmful than plant-based diets.
Wet vs. dry food vs. grain-free
Beyond ingredients, the environmental impact of dog food also depends on packaging and food processing.
Wet and raw foods tend to have a higher impact due to the weight of the packaging, the energy required for refrigeration, and higher transportation costs. Grain-free diets often have a higher footprint because they typically replace grains with higher proportions of animal protein or high-impact legumes. Although grain-free foods are often marketed as “more natural,” they offer no health benefits for most dogs, while significantly increasing the environmental footprint.
Generally, dry kibble is considered to be the most environmentally-friendly option. Since dry and wet foods have entirely different compositions, with wet food being mostly water, a dog would need to eat much more of it to meet the same energy requirements because carbohydrate levels are much lower in wet foods. Consequently, because wet food is less calorically dense, it requires significantly more energy to process, more material to package — specifically steel cans or aluminum trays — and more fuel to transport. Combining packaging and transportation, wet food produces a greater amount of GHG emissions.
Prime cuts vs. by-products
According to the 2026 study, using prime cuts instead of by-products increases environmental impact. Prime cuts, food that people could eat themselves, drive up the competition for resources and the carbon footprint. Instead, “animal derivatives” or by-products (such as offal) are often more sustainable because they utilize parts of the carcass that would otherwise go to waste.
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How to reduce your dog’s pawprint
According to John Harvey, the highest-impact dog foods are responsible for up to 65 times more emissions than dog food with the lowest impact. For perspective, the difference in the impact of human diets is 2.5-fold between vegan and high-meat diets.
There are a number of ways to decrease the environmental impact of dog food, and it’s not necessary to turn your dog vegan (unless you want to). Some of the most effective ways to reduce the impact:
- Choose kibble — dry food is almost always more efficient than wet or raw alternatives;
- Prioritize by-products — if you choose meat-based food, brands that use nutritious by-products rather than prime cuts are greener;
- Avoid red meat — swapping beef for poultry or plant-based foods can decrease your dog food’s footprint dramatically.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — Cover Photo Credit: Ayla Verschueren
