Weaning Dairies Off the Plastic Milk Container
I regularly peruse the aisles of supermarkets in the Bay Area to see if any new glass containers have arrived in plasticville. It appears the only glass act still around is Straus Family Creamery – a family-owned dairy farm on the shores of Tomales Bay and the Point Reyes National Seashore, 60 miles north of San Francisco. The Creamery sends it bottles all over the West Coast, including Oregon, Washingon, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.
Straus, a forward-thinking producer with a delicious product, offers consumers a refund for the deposit they pay when buying milk. This creates a system of sustainability akin to the old days of the milkman delivering and picking up our bottles in wire baskets with wooden handles.
“We get 6 to 8 uses of our bottles with over 80% of customers returning them to the stores,” Albert Straus tells me. He led the conversion of the dairy to a certified organic dairy in 1993. Bottles were a natural choice because glass is inert (nothing leeches into it) and it reflects the quality of his product. Still, he says, many dairies are trying to please a market bent on the convenience of disposables.
“Consumers need to make the shift, as well, and be willing to take bottles, rent them, and bring them back, which is a little more work,” Straus says. “We have a growing consumer base that is willing to do it.”
Then why aren’t his competitors following suit? Even the state’s first raw milk dairy, Organic Pastures Company in the San Joaquin Valley, sells its 100% pasture-grazed products in plastic bottles. If that isn’t counterintuitive I don’t know what is. It’s almost like preparing a gourmet vegan Easter supper and then serving it on paper plates with plastic utensils.
The same goes for Berkeley Farms from Emeryville, Calif., which still uses plastic to house its organic products, and Horizon Organic Milk out of Colorado, America’s first organic dairy brand which is sold at many markets in California as the healthy alternative.
On its website, Horizon describes its packaging as the “safest packaging possible” housing its half-gallon and quart milk cartons in earth-friendly, recyclable opaque paperboard. It says these cartons do not contain harmful chemicals, such as chlorine, and are colored using food-safe water-based inks. It adds when recycled, the materials used in our aseptic cartons, including the polyethylene and aluminum, are recovered and used again. Sarah Loveday, communications manager at Horizon, tells me it’s not really cost effective to bottle their milk.
“It’s more expensive to purchase glass and from sustainable standpoint, the weight of transporting it to retailers would increase our carbon footprint,” says Loveday. “In the end, the additional cost would be passed onto the consumer, which we don’t want to happen.”
But what about the landfill cost? Straus observes the so-called recyclable containers are treated in plastic for durability and aren’t truly biodegradable. He should know. Some of his other products – butter and ice cream – are sold in such packages and he is working on a plan to convert them, as well.
Elsewhere in the U.S., the benefits of glass are becoming more clear. Manhattan Milk in New York city delivers organic and hormone-free milk to city folks, requiring a $15 minimum order with a $5 delivery charge, saying it is your “new local milk man.”
In Kansas City, there’s Shatto Milk, which tells consumers it decided to use glass bottles because they keep milk colder, they’re eco friendly, and can be washed and reused as often as they are returned. Shatto adds that ” unlike paper cartons or plastic, glass imparts no foreign odor or flavor and glass bottles are most notable in history for containing farm fresh milk from the local family farm.”
But will the dairy state of California deliver those good bottles of white? Straus says he has created a good sustainable model for bottling milk with the deposit and return system and more efficient use of water to purify the containers for reuse. “We have cut our water use from 12 gallons a minute to one gallon and a half per minute,” he says, “thereby making old 50s washing equipment more efficient.”
Guess it’s truly up to us – the consumers – to get more organic dairies to follow that model, the same way we got America to eradicate trans fats in processed foods. If we demand bottles, they will come.
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8 Comments
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:57 am
I should add I heard from Berkeley Farms after I posted this milk round-up and they also attribute the plastic containers to cost. They say they used glass years ago and proved too costly and there was too much breakage. However, Strauss told me the breakage is very minimal–and we should remember many other food products are shipped in glass.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:20 am
I certainly agree with more glass and no plastic when it comes to food; and most other things as well.
I’ve contacted a couple dairy producers regarding the plastic screw-caps that are now part on most milk cartons. I find it unnecessary and wasteful as the built in spout works very well. They said that some people have trouble using the spout. They have also changed the adhesive on the cartons with the plastic screw-cap. The spout is still there but it no longer opens easily. Of course the plastic screw-cap and plastic spout aren’t recycled. More “unnecessary” waste.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
Yes, I’m looking into the screw caps. Remember the old foil ones? What was wrong with those?
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I have tile floors, and I would be very reluctant to switch to glass for milk. First, gallon and even half-gallon size glass bottles would be extraordinarily difficult to handle. But even worse – if one falls, you have glass all over your kitchen. (This just happened to me with something else, and I am still picking up splinters a week later.) I’m fine with cardboard, which I do recycle, and I agree with Todd that the plastic screw-caps make no sense. Clover Stornetta milk cartons don’t use the screw-cap, so you might want to try that if you are in the SF bay area.
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Thanks Clare though I’m in New York City. I love San Francisco and was there volunteering for Slow Food Nation last September.
I understand your issue with glass and tile floors. Especially when the milk bottles tend to have condensation.
I might look for a stainless steel vessel and transfer it from the glass bottle if I had that situation.
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:39 am
Perhaps we could return to the days of Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof, who drove his horse-drawn milk cart through the village, filling people’s milk jugs with fresh milk. That way, you don’t have the shipping, tile floor breakage (not sure how widespread that is) or the expense of making glass (some plastic goes into that, as well). Anyone up for old world milk delivery?
April 6th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Unfortunately, glass is not recycled in the northern population centers of New Mexico, as there is no local market for it. What little glass is collected for recycling in the state is shipped farther than the milk to other states. The local dairies might benefit from reusable containers, but only after they pay off the equipment for washing & sterilizing containers that are returned to them.
I favor good old WAXED containers. Yes, the wax is a petroleum product, but healthy compost bacteria will do a number on it, and barring that, we rural folk are still allowed to burn such things to start our woodburning stoves and ovens- waxed containers light very nicely.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Take the worry out of transporting delicious glass bottle milk or juice in the totally new EnPakt, environmentally friendly, all fiber glass bottle carrier. Endorsed by Straus Family Creamery. Also enjoy glass bottled milk from Broguires in the LA area and Claravale in central CA. If you are in NY try Byrne milk delivered by Manhattan Milk, in Illinois use Oberweis from your local grocery or home delivery, So. Illinois-Chester Dairy near St Louis. Missouri has many excellent dairies with Shatto leading the pack in the KC area and Heartland in St. Louis. Hildebrand is the perfect choice in Junction City, KS. The US has a minimum of 85 glass bottle dairies in all states except; SD, ND, NM, MS, AL, TN. If you know of glass bottle dairies/creameries in the listed states contact me.
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