War against plastic heralds return of a British tradition
FOR ANYONE who grew up in the Eighties or earlier, the gentle clinking of glass bottles and electric whirr of the milk-float were as familiar to the morning soundscape as the dawn chorus.
Yet by the Nineties the big supermarkets had moved in, switched to cheap plastic bottles, bought milk in bulk and left the milkman struggling to earn a living.
But now milk in glass bottles is making a comeback. Buoyed by the growing backlash against plastic as more evidence materialises of its impact upon the environment, milkmen are reporting a rekindled interest for the old traditional “pinta”.
Dairy UK, which represents the milk industry, said the decline of doorstep deliveries had been arrested and had now started to show an increase, standing at a million a day. Two years ago the figure was nearer 800,000.
Mark Woodman, 56, who runs Woodman’s Dairy in Rumney, Cardiff, has spent thousands of pounds on refurbishing his old milk float to meet the new demand, which he puts down to recent pledges by the government and industry to tackle plastic waste.
“This week and last week we’ve been inundated with calls asking us if we deliver glass bottles,” he said.
“We’ve had 50 to 100 people call in this week, with 30 to 40 new customers off the internet looking to cut down on their use of plastic.
“It’s great for us. Anything that gives us a bit of business back from the supermarkets is really good for us.”
Earlier this month Theresa May, the Prime Minister, announced plans to scrap all avoidable plastic waste by 2042 in the Government’s 25-year environmental plan, which could also see extra taxes applied to single-use plastic containers.
In 1975, 94 per cent of the nation’s milk was put into glass bottles, but that fell to less than three per cent by 2016. However, despite ongoing falls in sales of cow’s milk as people switch to nut, rice and soya options, the market for glass-bottled milk appears to be holding steady, and even slightly increasing.
Mr Woodman said he was receiving up to 140 inquiries a week from people looking to switch from plastic to glass.
Sales of milk in the traditional bottle had risen by around 30 per cent in the past two years, he added.
Parker Dairies in east London also reported “small but significant” rises in the number of bottles of milk ordered in the past two years, with 80,000 pints a week now sold.
The company has a fleet of 25 milk floats, but until recently sales had been declining by between five and eight per cent a year.
Even the larger milk providers are starting to buck the trend. In 2016, Müller, the dairy giant, bought Hanworth Dairy in south west London from Dairy Crest and pledged to save its glass bottling plant and delivery service which until then had been earmarked for closure.
The company has since created the Milk&more service, bringing bottled milk and other products to 600,000 doorsteps across the country. Patrick Müller, head of Milk&more, said glass bottles were “part of the fabric of British life.” Pensworth Dairy in Wiltshire also recently upgraded its glass bottle production facility after doubling its turnover.
The milkman first emerged in the 1860s with the advent of the railway, which allowed milk to be carried freshly and cheaply from farms into towns and cities.
Originally, milk was sold from house to house in a large churn into which the milkman would dip a measure, with customers providing milk jugs to fill.
But by the early 1900s, milkmen were delivering glass bottles by horse and cart, sometimes three times a day, as refrigerators were rare.
When people began to buy fridges in the Fifties, the milk round switched to once a day.
Today, there are estimated to be around 5,000 milkmen making daily deliveries to the doorsteps of Britain.