Glass milk bottles: Australian dairy turns back time in bid to end plastic scourge

23 Nov 2018 --- Australian dairy company Big River Milk is seeking funding in order to discontinue the use of plastic bottles and revert back to glass bottles to package its milk. The milk industry produces billions of single-use plastic bottles every year and the New South Wales company says it wants to start delivering fresh milk in rewashable and refillable glass bottles to help prevent the scourge of plastic pollution.

Director of Big River Milk, Peter Watt says: “We were really hit by the Australian ABC show ‘War on Waste.’ It made us start to think about plastic in the supply chain and how can we get rid of it. We use around 500,000 bottles a year, and we’re only a small producer. It is mind-boggling to think how much plastic goes into the system.”

Big River Milk concedes that the transition back to glass will be difficult and expensive, but it aims to be using glass bottles in 2019. The projected budget is estimated at US$290,000, with half the funding already raised.

The remainder of the funding will be raised by pre-selling milk home delivery subscriptions online in addition to crowdfunding.

“We really didn’t fathom just how many changes we would have to make to our systems,” says Watt. “From the bottle cleaning machines, right through to upgrading the weight rating of the trucks that deliver our milk – it’s all got to change.”

Big River Milk says that it needs to purchase the initial stock of bottles and upgrade most elements of its bottling and distribution process. In addition, it needs to install specialist systems to clean the bottle, meet the stringent health and safety regulations, and lastly upgrade all of its trucks to withstand the additional weight of transporting the heavier glass bottles.

“The starting point is the removal 137,520 plastic bottles per annum out of the supply chain,” the company states on its website. “If we replaced every plastic bottle from our supply chain it would be 500,000 bottles per year. If we can encourage other independents by showing what is possible it could be hundreds of millions of bottles each year.”