Milk bags more environmentally friendly than jugs or cartons | Hacker News Reader

Milk bags more environmentally friendly than jugs or cartons

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This is how Lemonades/Orangeade were sold in Poland in 70-90ties

https://s-trojmiasto.pl/zdj/c/n/9/1614/599x0/1614827-Uwielbi...

We also had ice cream packaged between thin waffle slices and wrapped in paper

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AszFCL3-C1M/UcHSgmG94nI/AAAAAAAAAe...

still manufactured 60 years later (since 1959) https://biznes.trojmiasto.pl/Lody-Calypso-maja-juz-60-lat-n1...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9rjfR84aKY&t=52

In India, Delhi and other major cities, water is sold in cheap pouches TODAY. Its usually 1-2 bucks which is very cheap

I could not find a video on it quickly but these water pouches are very accessible, very cheap in delhi

The bags are also significantly cheaper. It's a good 10-20% price difference with a carton and that's why they're more popular in the former Soviet Union. Or at least that's why my parents only every bought the plastic bagged milk over cartons.

My only issue with them is that it's sometimes hard to tell that one of them is broken in the store. Putting it into a backpack can be a disaster.

Canada is light years ahead when it comes to packaging milk. In the US you open a half gallon or gallon and it all loses its freshness. With bags you basically keep all of it fresh except the 1 liter bag you opened. It can also be stored lying flat. Cartons and gallon jugs are are shit but I think it would be too difficult for Americans to adjust, just like the metric system.

I lived in Ontario and loved getting milk in bags.

For those unaware, instead of a 3L jug, you typically get three 1L bags in a pack. It lasts longer (especially if micro-filtered) since you only break the seal on one bag at a time. You buy (once) a plastic pitcher to put the open bag in.

I've never gotten used to pouring from jugs. I have cereal every morning, and if I pour too gently, a thin stream drizzles down the side of the jug. If I pour harder it solves that problem, but then some milk droplets splatter off the cereal into the surrounding area (especially if I'm moving the jug around to get even coverage over the bowl). If I'm careful I can kind of slip the stream in at the edge of the bowl to avoid the splatter but it's tricky and my top layer of cereal remains dry.

Am I just a nincompoop? Is there some west-coaster trick to this I've yet to master?

There was a thread about this over here a while back... https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/80562/milk-jugs-c...

Caveat is they can flop around in bag pitcher/jug/containers and occasionally cause a mess, either when the bag flops awkwardly or from just being leaky due to bad cut. My friend has a fancy, passed down bag holder that pours properly from garage sale that I can't seem to find on sale anywhere. Also, personally feel there should be a bag + container design that can properly seal for freshness. Maybe a plastic straw in the corner that can be easily clamped by a lid. The downside of bags being in small markets like Canada is very little demand to design for form factor. It would be nice to have a bag + holder system that pours as well as a box.

when i was a kid in the 60's and 70's milkmen delivered milk in glass bottles to your door (a locked insulated metal box at the door in our case), talking away empties to be washed and re-used. it seemed like a pretty good system.

Some of the smaller markets in our area sell milk in glass jugs/bottles and charge a deposit (usually $3-5) that you can recoup if you wash and return the container. You can also keep the glass container if you want to use it for other things and just lose the deposit.

It makes the upfront cost higher but if you exchange a used bottle for a new one each time you buy milk it ends up being about the same cost as a plastic jug with quite a bit less waste.

Straus Creamery sells their milk in glass jugs—available at grocery stores in San Francisco, including Safeway, the big chain. Stores charge you a deposit for the jug and refund it when you bring it back. Works very well. It would be nice if they designed new jugs that didn't always spill on your first few pours, though.

Haven't seen an analysis on the carbon cost of carrying the extra weight, but I would guess it's lower than manufacturing?

I would love to see SF (or anywhere) implement a system for reusable food takeout containers that made it easy for both restaurants and their customers. All you'd need is a citywide standard set of containers. Restaurants get daily container deliveries (only the kind they want) and customers get weekly (or monthly) container pickup. It would probably make sense for Recology (the recycling company) to handle the pickups.

same around Chicago(-land) in 70s and 80s, and in Phoenix the grocery stores do the recyclable glass bottles from the local dairies still (but not to the metal box on the front step delivery from 50 years ago).

This is how our household nearly always gets milk, and has since I was a child.

I'm lactose intolerant, so my milk comes in blue bags. Goat milk bags are also coloured. I thought the colour coding is pretty clever and avoids a lot of mistakes.

Milk bags sound great. Never seen them in the US. It’s always difficult to store and then recycle the big plastic jugs.

I believe elementary school cafeterias in California used them back in the 90s and early 2000s. Not sure if they still do or not.

My elementary school gave out small milk cartons in the 90s (which I suspect is why, to this day, carton milk tastes much better to me).

The first time I recall seeing milk bags was in the DFAC in the Army circa 2001. I remember it feeling very weird the first time I saw them replace one of the bags.

They use them on ships in the navy, at least they did a decade ago. I would love to have them in my house, cartons are wasteful.

I've seen milk bags in the US, but it was giant ones to load these machines: https://www.silverking.com/project/majestic-series-milk-disp...

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