Would You Like a Bag of Milk?
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 06.25.07
Waitrose is to start selling milk in plastic bags, alongside reusable jugs. The idea is to reduce the amount of harmful plastic milk cartons that get used. They're strong and use a lot of plastic, but are thrown away after one use. The new bags will be use 75% less plastic, and are only designed to get milk home, rather than for a couple of days use.
180 million pints of milk are used every week in the UK, and only one in four plastic bottles is recycled. That means a huge amount of plastic is simply being dumped every week.
In the seventies another UK store tried the same thing, but the idea wasn't popoular. It has taken off in Canada though, where pouches of milk are available in stores. Jim Begg, of Dairy UK, said, "What you're seeing now I think is going to be an emerging trend. [But] it's expensive to make any new forms of packaging and operational systems, and we have to be confident it's going to have a meaningful effect."
The bags will be available on a trial basis in 17 stores, and will be rolled out to more if successful. Jane Hills, Waitrose's dairy buyer, said, '"Customers are increasingly looking for environmentally friendly solutions and the new milk packs and jugs will be top of their shopping list. The eco-packs will make a radical difference to the way milk is sold within the UK."
See also ::Milk price sees a-maize-ing hike ::TreeHuggerTV: How to Buy Green Milk w/Marion Nestle
In Canada we have been buying our milk this way for years, you have a pitcher and drop the bag in. It is very convenient and efficient.
Of course, it replaced a reusable deposit jug system that the milk producers kept showing pictures of returned jugs with cigarette butts and dead mice in them to scare us into getting rid of deposits and going for the bags.
Correction: parts of Canada.
Bagged milk is less popular out in the Western provinces. You'll find a lot of 4L jugs available at the local grocery stores.
what are the impacts of using boxboard as your milk jug? Its that cardboard container with wax coating type of container. I get those because i dont like buying the plastic bags for milk.
growing up in Ontari-ari-ario, the milk bag was all I knew! now in BC they're not available, though i've been lucky to find a lone dairy (Avalon) that still uses refillable bottles.
anyhow I encourage everyone in the UK to switch to milk bags despite how strange they might sound as first. here's how they work.
My mom has been reusing milk bags for years.
She washes them with dishsoap and uses them as freezer bags
I'm in Toronto and have never had milk poured from a carton/jug. I've only ever seen people have milk from the bags. Its easy and efficient, I cant imagine the hastle of jugs (although I think I may prefer the doorstep delivered glass bottles like england gets)
Actually I HAVE had milk from carton - but that was chocolate milk which i havent seen sold here in bag form.
Anyhow, my point is; why give consumers the choice? make an executive decision and just offer milk in bag form if thats the best delivery method. Consumers will adapt and get used to it.
I'm from Eastern Ontario and very rarely get milk in cartons or jugs. I will buy it in cartons when I need to travel with it in a cooler, or jugs when it's late at night and the local Macs/Beckers has run out of bags...
Bags are much more convenient and more manageable then the large 4L jugs, and the take up much less space when you're done with them.
Additionally bags can be reused to freeze fruits, sauces and foods as well as starting plants indoors for the garden.
We had bags when I was a kid, in Vancouver. I haven't seen them around much lately, although I do remember seeing them at superstore. They're fine, except when they spring a leak. Can you recycle the bags?
I like the idea of bags to reduce the number of plastic cartons, and would happily use them instead if they become an option (no Waitrose near me though) but I wish the good old milkman were promoted a bit more - particularly in the UK where even in the cities you have a pretty good likelihood of being within range of one. The bottles are glass and reused and they deliver all sorts of other stuff these days too.
Bags are much more convenient and more manageable then the large 4L jugs
But we don't have 4L jugs in the UK. The usual largest size containers are either 4 pints or 2 liters (which are about the same size).
My main concerns are the bag breaking on the way home and that the milk remains exposed (which is also a problem with glass bottles). Are Waitrose also going to sell the required pitchers that homes in Ontario have?
That's how they do things in Brazil (at least the part we were in), too. I think the bags were about one quart, and fit nicely in small (by US standards) Brazilian fridges.
In Zambia where I grew up this was common place along with paper cartons and here's something that has puzzled me for a long time why don't supermarkets in the UK and Ireland use recyled paper bags rather than plastic bags for people's shopping? These were also commonplace in Zambia and are given as an option in the USA, why not here?
We started buying these when they appeared in our local Waitrose, we've never had one break on the way home yet. Recently there have been supply problems to my local store and we've had to go back to buying the plastic bottles again. Really frustrating.
As they're 7 months into this now, I hope that they decide to keep it going!