Coincidence in a Milk Container

I'm a fan of the off kilter view of the world through the eyes of Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect. I just caught up on his take on milk packaging.

How is your milk packaged? What is the environmental impact of that packaging? To what extent does the packaging, whether a Tetra pak carton, plastic container, pewter jug, or bag (from Chai house in Dharavi) affect the enjoyment and perceived value of the milk?

We are going through the "emptying out the cupboards" before heading off to NZ to live; it turns out that its better not to bother taking food of any kind into NZ, even tinned, so we are buying hardly anything and using what we have.

A few weeks ago, what we had, was an emergency supply of powdered milk in a really basic, house brand 1.25 Kg bag. So I made it up, 2 litres at a time.

And made another environmentally driven change. We have regularly bought 2 litre plastic containers of milk, for $4.50 a time. The bag of skim milk costs about $6.83 so there's an immediate and substantial saving, but more to the point, the waste (even if it is recyclable) goes down significantly - milk bottles were a major part of our waste stream it seems.

Then we cut the energy and environmental cost of keeping the mostly water in the 2 litre bottles cool, and carrying the extra 900 grams per litre from the cow to the supermarket.

And to answer Jan question about the difference packaging makes to the enjoyment, the milk tastes exactly the same in the coffee and the food we make, but with a few drops of vanilla righteousness thrown in.

Comments

[Hamish Harvey]

Hi Earl,

What about the process of "drying" the milk? How much energy goes in? How much waste comes out? What is done with that waste? Where is the milk drying factory? How far does the "wet" milk travel to that factory? And the (much smaller) dried product?

On the criteria of food miles and energy consumption, it would surely be hard to beat glass bottles, washed and reused on site at a local dairy. But for other reasons, dairy is already an international business (luckily for my sister, who farms in NZ).

Cheers,
Hamish

[Earl Mardle]

Hamish

I did a rough calculation of the difference between drying the milk and shifting the wet stuff, and based on the huge difference in price I guessed that the drying option is lighter on energy consumption.

Production waste didn't come into it because I suspect that both create about the same.
As for glass bottles, we thought about that too, although its no longer an option in Australia. I suspect that the very high energy input to make them, plus the energy cost of sterilising them between uses is possibly higher than the energy cost of the plastic ones and with an effective recycling programme the plastic ones might come out slightly ahead.

The real questions are how we justify the energy and resource depletion at all for adult consumption of milk and the opportunity costs of the land use in feeding cows (methane production from the need to break down cellulose in grass which is pretty inefficient) to produce the milk in the first place.

They are small steps and I would do much better if I just kept my ass off airplanes.