Addressing the staples part 2 - Milk – a Glass v Plastic Debate

Getting low on milk in our house - what to do!

Typically we get though a plastic 4 pint bottle of semi skimmed milk every couple of days, which means that’s probably around 180 odd HDPE (high-density polyethylene) plastic bottles we throw in to our green bin each year to be recycled. Thumbs up to recycling our waste so it doesn’t end up in the oceans, but there is still an energy cost to this. Perhaps switching to a glass bottles being delivered to our door would be better?

Self-inflicted flow chart dictates that as we need milk (not sure the kids getting rickets is going to be a sensible move) that if there is an alternative to plastic, we should adopt it. After a bit of a Google and stumbling on http://findmeamilkman.net/, it seems that there is only one company that delivers milk in glass bottles in the Wallingford area and that is www.milkandmore.co.uk. Was very excited to see they try to get milk to you before 7am by a local chap called Dave. They have something of a monopoly on milk delivery as it has gradually dropped out of fashion over the decades. Only snag is that a pint of milk is £0.81, which is a big hike compared to the £1.10 charge for 4 pints (£0.28 per pint) from the local Waitrose – Gulp. Mr Harrison needs convincing.

What happens to that bottle in the green bin?

Time to ponder the recycling element which should mean we aren’t dumping waste in to the environment. What exactly happens to my plastic milk bottle when I plonk it in the green bin? According to the South Oxon website, all the recycling goes off to either North London or the West Midlands. Wah they then go on to with respect to plastic recycling -

Some plastics are processed in the UK, but at the moment a lot has to be sent to China as it is one of the few countries that has the facilities and the demand for recycling and reusing plastic. Plastics are sorted, shredded, washed, melted and turned in to pellets to make things like toys, mobile phone cases, pipes, crates and even textiles.

The idea of my bottles going to China doesn’t sound very good, but they may be captured by the “processed in the UK”. If some plastic is going to the West Midlands, it may be that it is being turned in to new plastic bottles, if the following BBC article is a guide.

The recycling journey may be from Oxfordshire to the Midlands for sorting and bundling up into bales, from whence they then head over to Yorkshire to be melted and turned into pellets. They then come all the way back down south to Milton Keynes, where they are created into new bottles, which are then presumably sent off to yet another destination to be filled with milk. Not quite all the way to China, but they are very well-travelled, and there’s going to be a carbon footprint with all that travelling (at a guess, around 400 miles), melting, sterilising and reforming. And looking at the plastic milk bottle in the fridge, there isn’t a label that tells me if the bottle has made from recycled HDPE, so presumably it has come from raw materials.

Comparing Glass to Plastic

So, is getting my milk delivered in a glass bottle more sustainable? Well, there’s an energy cost with creating a glass bottle, transporting it (it’s heavier than plastic), then cleaning and sterilising before re-use. Couldn’t find much data out there, other than a US study from way back in 1999 (Defra, 2007) which looks at energy for reuse of different containers, which also included transport costs for a 200km (!) trip from dairy to retail outlet.

• 4pt Glass Bottle (re-used 20 times) = 1600 (ish) MJ/’000l milk

• 4pt HDPE Bottle (single use) – 4500 (ish) MJ/’000l milk

I’ve listed the single use for HDPE value as these aren’t reused in the UK but recycled, which essentially is going to add more energy to the value above (remember all that the transport, sterilising, melting etc). In the energy stakes, and subsequent CO2 footprint, glass seems to be more energy efficient. Big thumbs up are that the Milk and More chaps are moving to use electric vans,( https://www.milkandmore.co.uk/our-environmental-promise), which I’m willing to go out on a limb isn’t as common in the US and is likely to bring the values above down even further. Electric floats mean less carbon emissions compared to big supermarket lorries delivering to supermarkets – though it would be good to find out more about which dairies supply deliveries in the Wallingford area and how that milk gets to the floats. Then again, these are probably questions to pose to local supermarkets as well, as, for all I know, my milk may be coming from Scotland under the flag of “British Milk”.

What about making it….

There was a brief family debate at dinner about buying a cow (youngest daughter was keen to be in charge of milking) but I think you would agree this would be a bit impractical to implement at our semi-detached. After this giggle fest, the non-plastic brainwashing that has been banded about in our house the last week seems to have worked as both girls said they would rather glass bottles to plastic ones – Mr Harrison overruled 3 to 1! Well, actually based on environmental grounds and I think I’ve managed to convince Mr Harrison we should pay more for our milk – that and a bit of negotiating saying I would give up the weekly biscuit and crisp habit, and drink less hot chocolate to make room for the extra cost. Phew – was worried that we would fail in our mission to reduce plastic waste in our house at the second hurdle.

And here is a couple of pics of the delivery we got this morning (+ a complimentary bottle of orange juice!) – kids were very excited to check bang on 7am bottle on the door step!

It was a tad dark at 7am this morning....

Glass bottles!