HIPSTERS love their almond milk because it’s healthy and doesn’t come from animals.

But that doesn’t mean it’s 100 per cent environmentally conscious, as many of them would like to think. Actually, it’s quite the opposite.

People are consuming such large amounts of almonds that it’s sucking the salmon, bees and what’s left of the water supply out of California at alarming rates, reports The Atlantic.

It takes 4.1 litres of water to produce a single almond, and right now California is churning out almost 1 billion kilograms of them a year — 82 per cent of the world’s almonds come from California.

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This means the almond farmers have to take all they can from the state’s aquifers, which support infrastructure like bridges and roads.

Over-pumping of aquifers has already caused the ground to sink several inches per year in central California, and if the process continues to increase as it has been, vital roadways and irrigation canals could collapse.

The low water levels are also putting indigenous salmon at risk of the often fatal fungal infection gill rot.

Thousands of the endangered king salmon of Northern California’s Klamath River will be dead unless more water is released into the river in the coming months.

Yet this is nothing compared to the threat facing California’s bee population, already dropping by the tens of thousands due to pesticides in almond farms.

Farmers tend to apply more than one pesticide or insecticide at once because it’s easier than making separate trips through these gigantic fields for each chemical.

California bee broker Denise Qualls told NPR that she has lost 10 per cent of her bees to almond farms this year.

Beekeepers are currently meeting with representatives from the US Environmental Protection Agency to request that more restrictions are put on the intervals in which pesticides are applied, she said.

And what about all the manpower needed to keep drilling all these new almond wells?

NPR reports that workers for drilling companies are forced to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, to keep up with demand.

According to The Atlantic, 44 per cent more land in California is being used for almonds compared to 10 years ago.

So congratulations, hipsters. You’re so nonconformist that the entire state of California has been forced to change.

This article originally appeared on Elite Daily.