Press & Media
Everything a journalist needs to cover World Plant Milk Day — the official global campaign held every 22 August. Press release, key facts, coverage and brand assets below. For interviews, hi-res images or the full asset pack, get in touch.
Media contact
Robbie Lockie — Founder, World Plant Milk Day
Interviews, hi-res images and campaign assets available on request. Robbie is available for interview.
At a glance
- What: World Plant Milk Day — a global day celebrating plant milk and its 5,000-year heritage.
- When: Saturday 22 August 2026 (the 10th edition).
- Founded: 2017 by Robbie Lockie, co-founder of Plant Based News.
- This year: The Heritage Campaign — an interactive globe mapping 11 plant milk traditions across six continents, from tiger nut milk on the Nile (~2400 BC) to Swedish oat milk (1990s).
- Take part: The free 7-Day Plant Milk Challenge — try a different plant milk every day for a week, joining people celebrating in cafés, homes and organisations around the world.
- The stat: Roughly 68% of adults worldwide have some degree of lactose malabsorption (The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 2017).
In the news
A selection of coverage of World Plant Milk Day.
- Green Queen — “Future Food Quick Bites: Oatly x Breadfast, Blended Koji Beef & Plant Milk Day”
- Tech Times — “Fungus Grown in Old Brewery Now Matches Beef Price…” (features World Plant Milk Day)
- ProVeg International — “Pour yourself a healthier future this World Plant Milk Day”
- One World News — “Benefits, Importance, And Why More People Are Choosing Plant-Based Milk”
- National Today — World Plant Milk Day
Brand assets
World Plant Milk Day logo
Download logo (PNG)Need hi-res logos, campaign imagery, the interactive globe stills, or the press release as a PDF? Email contact@worldplantmilkday.com and we'll send the full pack.
Press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — 14 August 2026
Plant milk is older than the pyramids — and this year's World Plant Milk Day has the receipts
The tenth World Plant Milk Day arrives on Saturday 22 August with the Heritage Campaign: an interactive globe mapping 5,000 years of plant milk tradition across six continents, from tiger nut milk on the banks of the Nile to almond milk in medieval monastery kitchens.
LONDON — World Plant Milk Day returns on Saturday 22 August, and this year the campaign has stopped arguing about whether plant milk is a trend. It built a globe instead.
The Heritage Campaign, created by campaign founder Robbie Lockie with volunteer creative partner Nazlıgül Çınaroğlu, centres on an interactive globe at worldplantmilkday.com. Spin it and eleven plant milk traditions light up across six continents, each pinned to the place and era it comes from. The oldest goes back around 5,000 years. The youngest is barely thirty.
The dates run deep. Austronesian seafarers were grating coconuts into milk around 3000 BC, before the Great Pyramid was finished. Ancient Egyptians ground tiger nuts into a sweet, milky drink around 2400 BC; Spain still drinks its descendant today as horchata de chufa. Stone carvings from Han dynasty China show soy milk being made nearly 2,000 years ago. By the 13th century, monastery kitchens across France and England were straining almond milk through linen every Lent, when dairy was forbidden. Medieval cooks called it milk, and nobody wrote in to complain.
Plant milk still gets covered as a fad, a lifestyle purchase, a culture-war prop. Set against the record, the campaign argues, that framing is simply wrong on the facts. It also skips the biology: roughly 68% of adults worldwide have some degree of lactose malabsorption. For most of humanity, dairy was never the default.
“Every August someone tells me plant milk is new, or a fad, or, my favourite, ‘woke’. It's a strange sort of fad that turns up in Han dynasty stone carvings and 13th-century monastery kitchens. People were drinking tiger nut milk on the Nile while the pyramids were still new. We didn't invent plant milk. We put it in a carton and took the credit.”
— Robbie Lockie, founder of World Plant Milk Day
“This campaign isn't here to tell anyone what to drink. It's here to correct the record,” added Lockie, who was also one of the founders of Plant Based News. “Two in three adults on this planet can't fully digest lactose. Calling plant milk the ‘alternative’ gets the story backwards.”
The new direction was shaped by Çınaroğlu, who volunteered on this year's campaign and developed the heritage concept from first sketches to finished globe. “We made one decision early on: stop debating, start showing,” said Çınaroğlu. “The story was already there, in old cookbooks and stone carvings and kitchens on six continents. Our job was to put it somewhere people could spin it. You don't need to win an argument when you can hand someone a globe.”
Alongside the globe, the campaign is inviting the public to take the 7-Day Heritage Challenge: try a different plant milk every day for a week. Cafés, brands and organisations can join the day through the site's get-involved hub.
There is one deliberate joke built into the map. The tradition most people reach for first, oat milk, is the youngest thing on it, developed in the 1990s by food scientist Rickard Öste at Lund University in Sweden. On this globe, oat milk is the newcomer. The latest entry in a 5,000-year habit.
The globe is live now at worldplantmilkday.com. World Plant Milk Day falls on Saturday 22 August. Follow the day at #WorldPlantMilkDay.
ENDS
Notes to editors
The eleven traditions on the globe:
| Tradition | Where | When |
|---|---|---|
| Macadamia harvesting | Aboriginal Australia | 40,000+ years of harvesting and trade |
| Coconut milk | Austronesian islands, Maritime SE Asia | ~3000 BC |
| Tiger nut milk | Ancient Egypt | ~2400 BC |
| Rice milk | Ancient China | ~1000 BC |
| Bambara groundnut milk | West Africa (Ghana and Mali) | Millennia-old tradition |
| Soy milk | Han dynasty China | 1st–3rd century AD; first factory outside Asia, Paris 1910 |
| Almond milk | Baghdad and the Islamic world | 8th–12th century medical texts |
| Almond milk in Europe | France and England | 13th century; a Lenten staple |
| Poppy seed milk (aguonpienis) | Lithuania and Latvia | Medieval; still a Christmas Eve tradition |
| Badam doodh | Mughal India | 16th century |
| Oat milk | Lund, Sweden | 1990s |
Lactose figure: a 2017 meta-analysis in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology estimated that 68% of the world's population has some degree of lactose malabsorption.
About World Plant Milk Day: founded in 2017 by Robbie Lockie, World Plant Milk Day is marked every year on 22 August and is now celebrated by campaigners, cafés and brands around the world. 2026 is its tenth edition. The Heritage Campaign lives at worldplantmilkday.com.
About Robbie Lockie: Robbie Lockie is the founder of FoodFacts.org, a non-profit using AI to bring transparency to the food system, and one of the founders of Plant Based News. Lockie founded World Plant Milk Day in 2017 and is available for interview.
About Nazlıgül Çınaroğlu: Nazlıgül Çınaroğlu joined the 2026 campaign as volunteer creative partner, developing the Heritage Campaign concept and setting its creative direction.