We need to eat less meat, but what about our pets?

For anyone trying to take a big bite out of their emissions, ditching animal products is usually step number one. But we’re not the only members of our households whose diets could be gentler on the Earth. A recently published analysis in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems says that feeding our furry friends consumes about 9% of livestock globally—and as much as 20% in the U.S.—which drives up our pets’ share of planet-warming emissions. Animal agriculture, lest we forget, is responsible for at least 25% of human-caused emissions, and some 30% of the world’s methane.

Carbon pawprints are also trending in the wrong direction. Pet owners are increasingly opting for more “human-grade” food, which is generally much higher emitting, and more households are opening their arms to four-legged freeloaders. In the U.S. alone, the number of homebound critters has tripled since the ‘70s, and the global population of dogs and cats has reached about 1 billion. That’s a lot of kibble.

But that same Frontiers study also found that switching to vegan pet food options could significantly decrease emissions. If the hundreds of millions of domesticated cats and dogs around the world gave up their carnivorous foodways, it would cut global greenhouse gas emissions by more than the combined footprints of the U.K. and New Zealand—and, in the process, free up more land than Mexico and Germany combined.

Not sure if a plant-heavy diet is right for your pet? Dozens of studies have shown plant-based diets for dogs are perfectly fine (and sometimes even have better health outcomes), because veggie options are designed to meet all pups’ nutritional needs. “Dogs have evolved into basically omnivorous animals over the 15,000 years that they have evolved with humans,” notes Gregory Okin, an environmental sustainability professor at UCLA. As for cats? It’s typically harder for a feline to go meat-free than a doggo due to their carnivorous physiology, and there’s less data on Fluffy scarfing plants than Fido, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible: One 2023 paper in the journal PLOS One found that kitties who went vegan tended to be healthier than their meat-eating counterparts.

Major pet brands are taking note of these trends, and plant-based options are slowly catching on in the U.S. Even if going totally veggie isn’t right for your pup or kitty, there are still things you can do to trim their planetary impact. We’ve laid out some do’s and don’ts when it comes to filling up the food bowl.