Introduction

Today is Earth Day 2026. While the conversation turns to fossil fuels and plastic pollution, two of the world’s most commercially powerful industries are quietly responsible for a scale of environmental damage that rarely makes the agenda.

The environmental cost of alcohol and cannabis is not a fringe concern. Researchers have documented and peer-reviewed it, and growing in scale alongside the industries that produce them.

The Dalgarno Institute works from a single, clear position: harm is preventable. That applies to what alcohol and cannabis do to people. It applies equally to what they do to the planet.

870 Litres of Water. 1.5 Gigatons of CO2. Half the Bottles Never Recycled.

It takes 870 litres of water to produce a single litre of wine. Not to fill the bottle, label it, ship it, or chill it. Just to grow the grapes and process the product. That figure comes from the Water Footprint Network, and it sits against a backdrop of accelerating water scarcity. A third of the world’s major groundwater systems are already in distress. Nearly two-thirds of the global population experiences severe water shortages at least one month of every year. The alcohol industry draws heavily on the same systems.

The carbon cost compounds it. Across the full lifecycle of production and distribution, the global alcohol industry generates approximately 1.5 gigatons of CO2 equivalent annually. That is roughly the same as 276 million cars running for a full year. Wine accounts for a disproportionate share. Research from Sweden found that wine and spirits generate around three times more greenhouse gas emissions per litre than beer. A lifecycle analysis of a single 75cl bottle of wine from a small Spanish vineyard put its carbon footprint at close to 3,800 grams of CO2. Scale that across global production and the number becomes difficult to absorb.

Then there is the glass. Alcohol is overwhelmingly packaged in it, and glass takes up to one million years to decompose in landfill. Globally, industries recycle only around 21% of glass produced. In the UK, an estimated 50% of alcohol containers that could be recycled are not. They go to landfill where they will outlast every human institution currently in existence.

This is not a recycling awareness problem. It is a production volume problem, and no one has ever required the alcohol industry to put any of this information on its packaging.

4,600kg of CO2. Wildlife Killed. Streams Left Dry.

Cannabis has cultivated an association with environmental consciousness for decades. The reality of large-scale cultivation is considerably less green.

Producing one kilogram of cannabis indoors generates approximately 4,600 kilograms of CO2, roughly equivalent to driving a passenger vehicle for an entire year. The energy demand is extraordinary. Indoor grows run high-intensity lighting for up to 16 hours a day alongside industrial ventilation and climate control systems. In Denver, cannabis operations doubled their share of total city electricity consumption within the first three years after legalisation, approaching 5% of electricity use for a city of 2.8 million people. Fossil fuels still generate most of that electricity.

Outdoor cultivation carries its own damage. Cannabis is water-intensive at every scale, requiring approximately 22 litres per plant per day during the growing season. In California, water diversion for cannabis irrigation has left streams in Mendocino County completely dry during summer months. The downstream effects are not abstract. Coho salmon and steelhead trout populations have collapsed in affected watersheds. Research has documented an 80 to 116% increase in cannabis cultivation sites near high-quality habitats for threatened and endangered fish species. The fish need cold, clean water and consistent flow. They are not getting it.

Pesticide use compounds the harm. At illegal grow sites, which operate on public lands with no regulatory oversight, researchers have compared the quantities of pesticides applied to a single half-acre plot to what growers would use on 1,000 acres of corn. These chemicals enter food chains. In California, 79% of dead Pacific fishers, small carnivorous mammals, traced to cannabis cultivation sites. The problem is not confined to illegal operations. Legal, regulated grows carry their own environmental costs, and those costs scale directly with the market.

How It Gets Normalised

Both industries have learned to speak the language of sustainability.

Wine producers talk about lighter bottles. Beer companies publish renewable energy targets. Cannabis operators lean on the plant’s natural image and organic associations. None of it changes the fundamental calculation of what these industries require at the volumes they currently operate.

The environmental cost of alcohol and cannabis does not appear on any label. There is no water footprint on a wine bottle, no CO2 figure on a beer can. Consumers make choices in the absence of information that would allow them to understand the full cost.

Cannabis has benefited from a different kind of protection: the political momentum behind legalisation has made critical scrutiny of the industry’s environmental record feel, to some, like an attack on reform itself. It is not. It is the same question prevention asks of every industry that causes harm: who pays the cost, and why is that cost treated as inevitable?

Prevention workers recognise the pattern. The product is normalised. The damage is externalised. Communities and ecosystems absorb the bill.

Prevention Is the Answer

The standard response to this kind of evidence is to argue for better practices, greener methods, and consumer responsibility. That is management, not prevention.

Prevention asks whether these costs need to exist at all. The environmental cost of alcohol and cannabis is not a fixed feature of modern life. 870 litres of water for one litre of wine is the result of a product grown, processed, and sold at industrial scale in a world that cannot afford the water it consumes. 4,600kg of CO2 per kilogram of cannabis is the result of an energy-intensive production system built to supply a market that is being actively expanded.

Reducing alcohol and cannabis uptake, particularly among young people, is one of the most direct ways to reduce the environmental cost of alcohol and cannabis at scale. Fewer products demanded means fewer products produced. Prevention is not separate from the environmental agenda. It is part of it.

Get Involved This Earth Day 2026

The environmental cost of alcohol and cannabis is rarely part of the Earth Day conversation. It should be. EarthDay.org has clean-ups, campaigns, and events running across more than 190 countries. Find something near you. Show up. And ask why these industries have never been held to account for what they leave behind.

Our power. Our planet.

The Dalgarno Institute is a prevention-focused organisation advocating for communities and young people protected from the harms of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs.

Sources

1. 870 litres of water per litre of wine / 50% of alcohol containers not recycled in the UK Water Footprint Network; Institute of Alcohol Studies (2022); Health Promotion International, Oxford University Press (2024). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10836053/
   
2. Wine industry global emissions 1.5 gigatons CO2e annually / wine generates 3x more emissions than beer per litre University of Stirling / La Trobe University, Health Promotion International, Oxford University Press (2024); Movendi International. https://movendi.ngo/the-issues/the-problem/obstacle-to-development-2/alcohol-as-obstacle-to-environmental-development/
   
3. Global glass recycling rate 21% / glass takes up to one million years to decompose in landfill Glass Recycling Efficiency: Global Statistics and Trends (2026); Business Waste UK. https://gradeall.com/glass-recycling-efficiency-global-statistics-and-trends/
   
4. 4,600kg CO2 per kilogram of cannabis indoors / Denver cannabis electricity doubling Mills (2012), cited in Journal of Cannabis Research, PMC (2021); Clark Hill Environmental Review (2022). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8349047/
5. Water diversion drying California streams / salmon collapse / 79% of dead fishers exposed to cannabis pesticides Integral Ecology Research Center (IREC); JSTOR Daily environmental review; Environmental Science & Technology Letters, ACS Publications. https://daily.jstor.org/the-environmental-downside-of-cannabis-cultivation/ https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00844