MAKE MINE A PINT!
Green Scots want white stuff in bottles again
The traditional glass milk bottle is making a comeback as concerns mount over plastic pollution.
Environmentally-conscious customers looking for ways to cut their consumption are switching from plastic milk cartons.
Demand is rising so fast that the humble glass door step pint, which looked to be doomed, is enjoying a new lease of life.
And dairies say that David At ten borough’ s recent BBC1 blockbuster Blue Planet II, with its distressing shots of creatures tangled in plastic dumped in our oceans, could be behind the sales switch.
McQueen’s Dairies is one of those seeing a massive increase in orders for glass bottles.
“Glass bottles make up about 10% of our deliveries and we’ve seen a 25% jump in demand since Blue Planet II,” said director Callum McQueen, who runs the dairy business, founded by his parents, with his three brothers and his sister.
“That was both from new customers who’d been affected by what they’d seen and wanted to find an alternative to the plastic they’d been buying and from existing customers looking to change.”
The dairy has three de pots covering the central belt of Scotland and another three in the north of England.
They have 20,000 glass pintas out for doorstep delivery every day.
Unlike plastic cartons which are used once before being discarded, each glass bottle is reused around 20 times.
“The customers will give them a wash and leave them back on the doorstep for the driver to uplift again,” said Callum. “We wash them, put them through our machines and re-fill them ourselves.
“We’ve got hundreds of thousands of bottles and are happy to add to that as demand grows.
“And although the vast majority of our milk still goes out in plastic containers, we’ re looking even harder at seeing if there’ s anything else we can do to help the environment.
“We’ re also
looking to see if we can promote the glass bottles even more.”
In the mid- 1970s 94% of UK milk was delivered in glass bottles but five years ago that had fallen to a mere 4%.
However, there has been a recent resurgence in interest.
According to industry body Dairy UK, deliveries of glass bottles have surged by 25% to about one million in the past two years.
When multi- national dairy giant Muller took over Dairy Crest it reversed plans to close a major glass bottling plant, phase out all milk in glass bottles and sell only plastic bottles.
Instead it decided to make a major push back to glass on their doorstep deliveries to more than 600,000 homes through 3000 milk floats.
Other dairies have also reported booming demand as consumers look to move away from plastic and are happy to find alternatives to buying milk on their weekly supermarket shop.
Wee Isle Dairy, on Gigha, which took the decision to switch to glass and bottle their own milk has attracted huge interest, with boss Don Dennis also saying Blue Planet II had made a huge difference.