No, I cannot afford that kind of price in order to be enviromentally friendly, or for any other reason.
It is a catch22 really, because unless more of us start buying enviromentally friendly produce it won't become cheaper, but until it does become cheaper, we cannot afford it.
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Milk in pint bottles @98p
(110 Posts)I’ve just been sent a leaflet about milk deliveries. I know it would be delivered by an electric vehicle, in recyclable glass. I know the cost would factor in vehicle ‘fuel’, wear and tear, cleansing and loading of bottles costs and wages, but I can’t afford to pay £15.68 per week instead of the £4.60 for the milk I can get at the local supermarket.
Would you be environmentally friendly at that price difference?
My GF started his working life as a milkman and ended up running his own dairy. I will continue to have bottles of milk delivered while it’s available.,
I live in a rural farming village but have never been offered milk delivery, we did in the city I lived in but it came after I went to work and was a giveaway that we were not in. We were burgled whilst I was at work. The police advised us to stop it and any other daytime deliveries.
Now retired in a rural location I have had no offers of veg boxes or milk. We do buy our meat from a local Farmers consortium and can and are willing to pay for superior meat. We buy a few months at a time which saves their petrol and our postage costs.
We do consider ourselves lucky and if I had to use a food bank I would buy supermarket milk at a much lower cost.
No one should feel guilty about budgeting Mollygo and no one should be in the circumstances to have to,unfortunately many are. I sympathise with you.
There's absolutely no way in hell that I could justify paying almost 4 times as much for my milk, where does it all end?
I recycle all paper, card, glass, cans, plastics and soft plastics, I compost, my dog rats pretty much anything I might leave on my plate at the end of my meals. Other rubbish takes over 2 months to fill my wheelie bin.
It's not possible to have a charging point on my house, so I drive a self-charging hybrid car.
I'm doing everything I possibly can to be environmentally friendly/ sustainable, in every way I possibly can but some things are just not sustainable for my pocket.
No, I wouldn't because of the very bad service we used to get when we used milkman services in the past, and we could not afford that huge price difference, given the amount of milk used in our household.
Much as I would like to buy doorstep milk, my budget simply wouldn't stretch to x3 prices ? I come from a dairy area and realise the supermarket effect, but money has to come from somewhere
That does seem rather expensive Mollygo. No doubt it's the cleansing processes, breakages and milkman's wages that push the price up. We buy milk produced on a farm just a few miles away and sold in our village shop in recyclable plastic bottles. It's a little more expensive than supermarket milk but it's nice milk and we like to buy local when we can.
I have my milk delivered by a local farm, 0.72p pint in glass bottles. I only have 2 pints a week & don't always use that up. Whole milk as it's better for sauces, usually 1 coffee per day, milk does keep very well. Delivery times vary but I don't hear him even though my bedroom door is adjacent to my front door, always milk on the doorstep when I get up. My milkman delivers lots of other things as well, cream, cheese, bread, potatoes, yoghurt, fruit juice, eggs etc. No way would I buy from a Supermarket except for the occasional pint of "emergency milk" to freeze.
Does no one else use an insulated container for their doorstep milk? My milkman just pops the bottles in there and they stay cool until I bring them indoors.
I pay 80p per bottle. As I live in a fairly isolated area I am so pleased to support our local dairy farmers and at the same time staying self isolating. My milkman also delivers my papers and, if I need them, cream, orange juice (in bottles) potatoes, and many other goods. As I do get snowed in, in bad weather, he usually manages to make my delivery so I don't go without.
We have milk delivered in glass bottles, three times a week. (It used to be five times, but about 2 years ago they reduced it to three). The cost is 72p a pint. We just keep to our regular order and if it looks like we may run short for any reason pick up a litre when out and about.
It may be a little more expensive but there is a big difference when compared to the supermarkets. For instance its a lot creamer particularly in the summer when the cows are out in the fields. Makes us wonder whether supermarket milk has the cream taken off it, which is then used for other purposes? It is also convenient and helps keep local people in a job.
We have just cancelled our doorstep deliveries because the front of our house faces east and the milk was delivered at around 2am so in the summer the milk went off very quickly so I was throwing more away than I useMy favourite milk is raw milk collected from the farm.Unfortunately I can only buy it when I visit my sister in law as it's too far to travel everyday
I have tried to support local milkmen in the recent past but both times they ignored notes I left out to say no milk today because I didn’t need it sometimes. We didn’t consume much milk so it became troublesome and I had to throw it away when it went off. Now we use soya milk from Aldi and I probably couldn’t afford a delivery anyway.
I buy milk in 4 pint, plastic bottles from my local corner shop. They have a long use by date and that quantity lasts us at least a week. I re-use the bottles many times over as there are four of them, filled with water, stationed beside the four water bowls left out around the house for our dogs. When they're getting on a bit, they go in the recycling.
ecochain.com has a comparison of the environmental impact of glass and plastic packaging. The results of their analysis are not as cut and dried as you might expect.
I've been getting my milk delivered in bottles for 40 years (first Unigate now called Milkandmore). I only get four pints a week and a couple of bottles of fruit juice and it's not much more than a fiver. I like the fact that the bottles are re-used.
As Cows milk upsets my stomach I buy Goats milk! Asked a Milkman who left leaflets advertising his round if he could deliver Goats milk & was told ‘dont do that rubbish’! So carried on buying Goats milk from Sainsburys with my weekly delivery!
Plastic milk bottles are recycled here in Brighton. I tried to order milk in glass bottles when I was working, and sometimes they would sit outside until I came home and went off. Also there was no easy way to stop it if there were too many. We need to fund more recycling and have a government policy for it. For example, Brighton Council claims to be Green, but doesn't even recycle yogurt pots! They blame an old contract but there is no reason why it shouldn't be renegotiated when other councils are signing up with the same supplier. The Councils need to work together. There are new plastics being invented which are recyclable, that's the way we should be going! I rather pay extra money for research and invention.
No, the difference is too much. I do, however, buy organic milk and would pay a little more to support farmers. It’s easy to romantisise the delivered bottle, but there were problems like sour milk in hot weather. An awful lot of energy goes into collecting, cleaning and sterilising glass which as to be factored in to the carbon footprint. I have my milk delivered once a week, whereas the milkman has to drive his delivery round at least 6 days a week..
I always thought milk cheese eggs veg should be subsidised to encourage healthy diets for children . Successive governments have ignored the needs of the poorest in society in favour of politically popular actions like tax cuts for rich/no Vat on pipe cleaners yet vat on sanitary products!!(yep) /ability for the rich to offset everything from tea towels to that Bentley against tax as a 'tool of trade'........ Everyone else PAYE and shell out for clothes etc for work without recompense. Elitist thuggery. Milk is cheap because government allows big bully boys. To virtually monopolise milk trade by abolishing milk marketing board and price commission as Wolfy Smith said once " up the revolution!" ?. It would be hilarious of it were fiction.....
I have milk delivered twice a week and top up from the supermarket. I have noticed that the supermarket milk in the dreaded plastic bottle tastes creamier than that delivered in a glass bottle. Both are whole milk so I’m wondering if the supermarket milk is treated differently.
BTW I’m from a farming family and we just drank it straight from the cow, brought in by my father in a billycan from the morning milking. When it turned my mother made cottage cheese.
Where does the awful trend to refer to a postman as a 'postie' come from? Yet in the same comment there seems to be no hesitation in talking of a 'milkman'. And I assume the bulk of the discussion on this topic is by - 'women'!
We changed to milk in bottles from a local dairy farm not far away when they set up a new business. It's a bit more expensive but everything is recycled (no plastic waste). They are expanding deliveries to more surrounding villages and the things they can offer (all local produce!).
There is a dutch coffee chain that enables customers to make a donation directly to the farmer who grew the coffee instead of tipping. This is done via blockchain. I have suggested this to Waitrose as a means of supporting farmers via our purchases but have had no reply. 
Peasblossom
How is glass more environmentally friendly than plastic?
Because you return the empty bottles to the milkman where they are sterilised and used again. Plastic is used once, ok it’s recycled, we hope, but still single use.
We have milk delivered in glass by the milkman 3 times a week and it is more expensive than the same product in plastic bottles from Waitrose. We keep three plastic ones in the freezer against occasional extra need and replenish them. Occasionally we have too much from the milkman and save a pint in plastic in the freezer. We've always done it this way and very rarely do we use the milkman for anything else except last year we bought a turkey. We like the convenience of fresh milk on the doorstep and can afford it. Our choice has nothing to do with supporting local farmers, etc. In my view farmers have had a lot of taxpayer subsidy.
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