We sat down with our friends from HOPE Pet Food to learn more about pet nutrition and the future of sustainable foods.

As awareness increases about the colossal carbon footprint agriculture leaves on our planet, people are making more conscious decisions about what they eat and where it comes from. It’s no secret that the climate crisis and our food choices are one and the same. After all, food production accounts for a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Although intergalactic travel would be cool, we can all agree that taking care of this incredible floating space rock we call home needs to be our priority.

An intuitive recommendation you commonly hear is: buy local. Naturally, this makes sense. If the food has less distance to travel, then fewer emissions come from that food, right?

Transportation turns out to be one of the least prominent factors when assessing a food’s carbon footprint. It’s what you’re eating, not where it’s from, that holds the most weight in terms of environmental impact. To put this in perspective, the transportation of beef amounts to only 1% of its total carbon emissions. Even if you eat local beef, the bad news is it’s still leaving a huge carbon footprint.

But, people aren’t the only ones consuming huge amounts of animal protein…