By the numbers

How green is your pet?

A new book translates the environmental impact of Americans’ beloved dogs, cats, and fish into cold hard numbers

According to Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, a new book on climate change, dogs do more damage to our planet than SUVs—not to mention the average Vietnamese or Ethiopian—when you look at their environmental footprint. Here are the numbers. 

Amount of land (in square feet) needed to produce the annual food requirement for:

Large dog: 118,500
• Medium sized dog: 90,600
• Average Vietnamese citizen: 81,890
• Average Ethiopian citizen: 72,310
• Cat: 16,100
• Hamster: 1,500
• Goldfish: 36

Sources: Time to Eat the Dog, via New Scientist, Wired

Recommended

A company made a meatball from lab-grown woolly mammoth, and you can't try it
Mammoth meatball
'extinct protein'

A company made a meatball from lab-grown woolly mammoth, and you can't try it

6 marvelous homes with great kitchens
House
Feature

6 marvelous homes with great kitchens

The Check-In: How to plan a trip to Antarctica
Penguins on an iceberg
Feature

The Check-In: How to plan a trip to Antarctica

The Week contest: Seaweed invasion
sargassum seaweed.
Feature

The Week contest: Seaweed invasion

Most Popular

How to watch 5 planets align in the night sky on Tuesday
Moon, Jupiter, Venus.
skyline

How to watch 5 planets align in the night sky on Tuesday

'Rewilding' animals could help combat climate change, study finds
Two gray wolves.
where the wild things are

'Rewilding' animals could help combat climate change, study finds

The snowmelt in California could cause a long-lost lake to re-emerge
flooding in Corcoran, California.
lost lake

The snowmelt in California could cause a long-lost lake to re-emerge