[OKC] From Slate: Should I buy milk in glass, plastic, or cardboard containers?

[Miles, Karen]

Disoriented in the Dairy Aisle


Should I buy milk in glass, plastic, or cardboard containers?

By Brian Palmer
Posted Tuesday, March 1, 2011, at 7:03 AM ET 
________________________________

I'm baffled by all the choices there are when it comes to buying milk.
How can the glandular secretions from a single ungulate arrive in so
many different types of packaging? Does it matter if I buy it in
plastic, cardboard, or glass?
The Lantern wonders whether the first humans to wring milk from a cow's
udder around 9,000 years ago <http://www.slate.com/id/2213121/>  had any
idea what kind of environmental consternation they were unleashing.
Leaving aside the questions of cow versus goat versus sheep, and whether
we'd be better off just getting our milk from beans
<http://www.slate.com/id/2195690/> , we might very well consider which
milk containers are easiest on the planet.
First, a quick review of the main choices. Most plastic milk containers
are made from high-density polyethylene, also known as HDPE or No. 2
plastic. Plastic milk jugs have a lot going for them. At just 4 ounces
per half-gallon container, they're so light that relatively little
energy is required to ship them from the manufacturer to the dairy, and
then on to the retailer and finally the consumer's home. 
The jugs are also recyclable, at least in theory. While plastic bottles
can be melted down and made into new bottles, none of the milk
containers in the United States are actually made from recycled
material. That's because of safety concerns over bacterial and chemical
contamination, and strict FDA guidelines for the manufacture of food
packaging from such second-hand sources. When it's reclaimed, plastic
from milk bottles is usually turned into toothbrushes, flower pots, and
children's toys, among other things. But according to the EPA, just 28.9
percent <http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/>  of it ends up in the
recycling bin. The rest may spend hundreds of years decomposing in a
landfill. 
A second kind of milk container-the gable-top carton-is made from
paperboard and coated with a layer of low-density polyethylene. Like the
plastic bottle, gable-top cartons are made from virgin materials.
Recycled paper isn't as strong as the stuff straight from the trees, so
a recycled container capable of carrying that much milk would have to be
much thicker, heavier, and more expensive.
Paperboard is made of trees, a renewable resource, which is good. And
they're only 1 ounce (25 percent) heavier than plastic bottles. But the
environmental positives end there. Making paper is a resource-intensive
process, requiring huge amounts of water, fossil fuels, and chemical
bleaches. While major manufacturers have launched a campaign
<http://www.rwbeck.com/Files/InsightDocs/Art_10_SW_Dorn.pdf>  (PDF) to
get municipalities recycling both the paper and the plastic content of
gable-top cartons, most Americans have no choice but to send them off to
the landfill. 
And then there are the milk containers made of glass. The major
ingredients-sand, soda ash, and limestone-aren't renewable, but they are
plentiful. (Sand is, incidentally, one of the main exports
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0db3a864-32f6-11df-bf5f-00144feabdc0.html#axz
z1DoeC15aF>  of North Korea. Just a bit of trivia.) Producing a milk
bottle's worth of glass takes a substantial amount of energy, since the
stuff has to be heated to more than 2,700 degrees
<http://www.treehugger.com/files/2004/11/ecotip_glass_a.php>
Fahrenheit. (It's still more energy-intensive to make a plastic
container from paperboard, however.) Fortunately, if consumers return
their bottles, the energy required to sterilize and refill them is far
less than what's required to make a new gable-top carton.
Article continues at URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2285529/
<http://www.slate.com/id/2285529/> 
________________________________

 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sustainableokc.org/pipermail/okc-sustainableokc.org/attachments/20110301/75090fef/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 2310 bytes
Desc: image001.gif
URL: <http://lists.sustainableokc.org/pipermail/okc-sustainableokc.org/attachments/20110301/75090fef/attachment.gif>