Plant Based Pensions
Pension schemes invest billions of pounds of our money into corporations that exploit and kill millions of animals a year. This includes so-called "Ethical" pensions.
As well as huge amounts of suffering, this also causes vast environmental damage, making the climate crisis even worse.
It's our money, we should choose how it's invested!
We're asking people like you to take a quick survey (less than 2 mins) to show there's support for plant based pensions.
Why pensions?
There's over £3 trillion of our money in UK pensions. Greening them would cut our carbon footprint 21 times more than going veggie, giving up flying, and switching to a green energy provider, combined. ref 1
Most people don't know how pensions work, and don't realise that they are funding things that go against their core principles.
Put simply, the pension uses your money to buy parts of companies (stocks and shares or bonds). Then, when the company makes a profit, it goes to the pension who hold it for you. (More details - external site)
So when your pension buys into a meat processing company, you're directly profiting from the killing of millions of animals, even if you're a vegetarian or vegan.
"Ethical" pension schemes do this too. They may limit themselves to not investing in animal testing, but we're not aware of any UK scheme that would even hesitate to invest in a slaughterhouse or factory farm.
Note: Except NHS, Civil Service and teacher pensions - these feed directly to/from the UK Treasury.
For the environment
Animal farming does incredible amounts of damage to the environment, and we're paying for it.
Animal farming is responsible for:
- Global greenhouse gas emissions from animal-based foods are twice those of plant-based foods ref 2
- 67% of agricultural deforestation is for livestock feed ref 3
- 78% of all food land use is for animal farming. Animal feed takes 39% of arable land use ref 3
- 41% of agricultural water use goes to livestock feed ref 4
- Over 75% of plastic waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch originates from fishing ref 5
- Animal farming is a leading cause of increasing antibiotic resistance, already causing over 1 million deaths a year ref 6 ref 7
- Destroys biodiversity, and increases species extinction ref 8 ref 9 ref 10
For the animals
Animals are sentient, feeling creatures, just like us. ref 11
Normal pensions mean that your hard earned money is invested into slaughter houses, meat packing companies, factory farms, and animal research labs.
- 95% of UK chickens bred for meat and 73% of UK pigs are living in the lowest legally permissible welfare conditions ref 12
- Globally, around 92 billion farm animals are factory farmed and killed every year ref 13
- Millions of experiments a year are carried out on animals in UK labs, including on over 2,400 dogs in 2023 alone. ref 14
How much profit is all this suffering worth?
Make an impact.
Save lives.
What you can do:
- Ask your employer and pension scheme for a plant based pension.
- Whether you are a vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore, you can help by taking a short survey to show there's support for plant based pensions.
