Milk cartons

On my way to Norwich this week I picked up a tatty copy of the Eastern Daily Press in the train. On about page three was an exciting article headed "pilot for greener pinta packaging". I immediately assumed it was talking about glass milk bottles but no. "First came the traditional glass milk bottle, then the plastic alternative – and now a Lowestoft supermarket has launched the ‘Green bottle.’"

That's how the article opened. Anyone would think, reading these words, that the traditional glass milk bottle no longer existed. And that the move from glass to plastic to the new sort was progress towards a greener alternative.

Alas no. This is yet another attempt by the supermarkets to climb onto a fake green wagon and persuade us that shopping at the supermarket is some kind of positive contribution to eco-friendly ways of doing things. This time the idea is that there is a cardboard outer bottle, which can be sent to cardboard recycling, and some kind of unspecified (plastic? presumably so) inner bag which evidently can't be recycled, but "is quickly biodegradable".

Hmmm

So you have to pull it apart and put part of it in the recycling box (or, for Cambridge presumably, the compost bin) and part of it in the landfill rubbish. Well, I'm sceptical how much of that will happen.

Part of this report makes sense: "With more than 100,000 tonnes of plastic bottles currently going to landfill each year – the equivalent of 260 jumbo jets ... "

Well, exactly. None of that need happen if people have their milk delivered in glass bottles that are re-used.

But some of it just doesn't make sense: “Designer Martin Myerscough said ‘It's always bothered me that consumers have had to buy milk in plastic bottles that are difficult to recycle.’”

But consumers in Britain don't have to buy milk in plastic bottles. If supermarkets didn't sell milk, no one would buy it in plastic bottles.

In my ideal Greener Britain, all local councils would subsidise the delivery of milk in re-usable glass bottles to people's doorsteps, so that it was the preferred way to get your milk, and they would allow only independent corner shops to sell milk over the counter. No milk available in supermarkets at all, and nothing in plastic bottles. That would cut 260 jumbo jets out of our landfill sites at a stroke. Just like that. And there'd be no cardboard to collect for recycling either. So the council would save money and the milk would be cleaner and greener. And people could have other groceries delivered, bread, milk, eggs, juice, yogurt, probiotic drinks and all the other things the milkman brings. And they wouldn't need to drive to the supermarket. And the Milkies would make a decent living, and they'd have enough families on their round to make their journey less wasteful. And the corner shops would be part of the community. And all would be well.

Milk

This is what our doorstep looks like in the morning.







In Norwich one day a week my doorstep looks like this.









Five minutes after fetching the milk in from the doorstep this is what my glass of milk on the breakfast table looks like.






From the cow to my breakfast, maybe 24 hours? Now that's what I call cold fresh milk. (I suppose it would be even better if I could go and fetch it warm from the cow).

I was thinking of taking a photo of one of my neighbour's doorsteps, with the blue recycling box piled high with plastic milk bottles: bottles which have doubtless been fetched from the supermarket by car, and will now be carried empty to some distribution place and sent back to China or somewhere for turning into more plastic things we don't want, before being shipped back here again.

Now this seems to me to be just mad. We could all have our milk delivered daily in clean glass bottles, clean milk with no contamination from the chemicals they use in plastics which leech into the contents of the containers. Of course the known ones of these (phthalates, which have been shown to cause hormone disruption, and are implicated in breast cancer etc) are now controlled and not permitted in most food packaging, but do you know what else they're putting in the plastic? When did you last think about how milk from plastic bottles always tastes of plastic? I guess people get used to it, and cease to find it disgusting.

But it seems to me highly likely that these kinds of pollution may have quite a lot to do with the increasing incidence of intolerance to milk. And asthma, and eczema. Why is it that so many children today can't drink milk? When I was young every child drank a third of a pint of milk every day at break time, from a glass bottle with a paper straw (no phthalates, no plastic chemicals) and they were healthy and happy.

No one had a milk intolerance. Is that a co-incidence?

My guilty secrets

There are some things I still do which I guess I shouldn't do. Here in no particular order are some of them.

(1) We still do a small amount of shopping at Tescos.

(2) I rather like drinking sparkling water at breakfast and after dinner, especially when I'm in a no-coffee phase. The water comes in plastic bottles.

(3) I occasionally go somewhere by plane, even when it's possible to go there by train.

(4) I sometimes drive to Wales and back just for fun.

(5) I have a bit of penchant for lychees (I bought some yesterday).

Probably there are others. I'll let you know when I have qualms about something else.

Now the question is, shall I try to justify and rationalise these weaknesses, so as to be able to live with them? Or shall I "offset them"? Or shall I try to get rid of them?