Milk Goes Green

Supermarket offers milk in a bag

Nipping down the shops to pick up a bag of milk may sound strange but could soon become the norm as a new eco friendly milk container is introduced. Sainsbury's is leading the way and will be selling milk in the new bags from Wednesday. Britons consume around 180 million pints of milk each week, so it sounds like a great idea and should help to reduce packaging waste. However, the idea is not new and has been tried before, so whats so great about it and will it work this time?

Not a new idea

Its been done before

Back in the Seventies the Co-op offered milk bags and Sainsbury's had a go in 2001, both of the supermarkets met consumer resistance and withdraw the bags from sale. Waitrose started to sell milk in bags in June 2007 and with growing awareness of environmental issues the idea seems to be starting to take off. The idea has certainly caught on in Canada where around 60 percent of fresh milk is now sold in bags.

The benefits of milk in a bag

Its all good stuff

Its estimated that only one in every four plastic milk bottles are recycled, that means an estimated 100,000 tonnes of plastic waste is still finding it's way into the UKs limited landfill sites. The new bags have a lower carbon footprint for manufacture, transportation and disposal compared to glass or HDPE (High-density polyethylene) bottles. The new bags can easily be recycled with most local councils offering doorstep collection for recycling. According to Sainsbury's, if we got milk in bags instead of polybottles we would use about 75 per cent less packaging. Some producers such as Daylesford Organics have taken the idea even further and sell their milk in biodegradable bags.

Will it catch on?

We think it will

Supermarkets and shoppers alike are now much better informed of why we need to reduce, re-use and recycle. In other parts of the world such as Canada and India milk has been sold in bags for many years already, so we are confident that milk in a bag will become a common sight in your local supermarket.

What we think

Our view on milk in a bag

The first step to being micro green is to reduce and with a large supermarket like Sainsburys offering milk in bag it also fits with our idea that being micro green should also be easy. Buying your milk in a bag instead of a bottle doesn't have any impact on a modern lifestyle, so for us it gets a thumbs up!

last updated 09/06/2008