Not jugs or cartons, but…

Buy your milk in bags

Milk is a staple of virtually every household, but what type of milk packaging is the most eco-friendly?  All three types of milk packaging – jugs, cartons and bags – are recyclable.  But unfortunately not all are accepted by all recycling programs.

As well, recycling isn’t a perfect solution: collecting and transporting recyclables costs time, money and fuel – especially when the end destination of those recyclables is half a world away.  Where I live, jugs and cartons are recycled, but in China.  Yep – sorted, baled, stuffed into a container and shipped thousands of kilometres.

So what’s a consumer’s greenest option for milk packaging?

1. Check with your local solid waste authority to see what’s accepted for recycling, and then choose accordingly.  In spite of its shortcomings, recycling is still better than trashing.

2. Choose the biggest size available; one big jug or carton uses less material than two or more small ones.

3. If all three types of packaging are recycled where you live, choose plastic bags:

• they are lighter (less material and less weight to transport)
• both the outer and inner bags are the same soft plastic as grocery bags so they can be mixed in with them (but inner bags must be well rinsed of residual milk)
• they may be recycled locally (as they are here in NB) as opposed to being shipped to China; and
• soft plastics (#4 LDPE) are one of those rare materials that can be perfectly recycled: that is, reprocessed back into the very same types of products over and over again.