Reading between the lines
Billionaire Graeme Hart has finally confirmed the rumours that he will be dumping glass milk bottles in the South Island in favour of milk cartons.
Yesterday afternoon his company, Meadow Fresh, issued a press release trying to justify the environmental friendliness of this clearly profit-driven move. It said:
Leading New Zealand consumer dairy products company, New Zealand Dairy Foods Limited, today announced the closure of its Christchurch glass bottling line with effect from 30 November 2005.
Although production of milk in glass bottles will cease, the company continues to support customers who wish to have milk home delivered with the introduction of 2 new 600ml Tetra Top carton milk products - Meadow Fresh Homogenised and Meadow Fresh Trim. The new cartons are the same size and the same price as the previous glass bottled milk.
Reading between the lines, however, there are a number of things left unsaid. The thought of having milk delivered to your door is a fading memory for many North Islanders. Not long after glass milk bottles were dumped, milk trucks soon followed. Reading more closely the company clearly says “the company continues to support customers who wish to have milk home delivered”. I have to hazard a guess that soon the company will find there are not enough people who wish to have their milk delivered to justify having the service.
The release goes on to say:
“However, the decline in consumption of milk in glass coupled with the age of the bottling plant mean it is no longer possible to keep manufacturing in today’s environment.”
Shall I translate? “People will have to buy our milk whatever container it comes in - they won’t have any option, so why go to the expense of modernising our old bottling plant for a mere 30,000 bottles a week?”
And the environmental costs?
The company noted that, although many people felt that glass bottles were more environmentally friendly than Tetra Top cartons the facts did not support this. Although glass bottles were reusable, there was a significant environmental cost in terms of water, chemicals, energy and effluent to sterilise them for re-use.
The majority of the Tetra Top cartons are made from a renewable resource - wood fibre, harvested from well managed sustainable forests and they are also recyclable. The company will be working with councils and recycling operators to help ensure the cartons are recycled.
Again allow me to insert the missing lines: Firstly TetraPaks are made in Scandinavia, so there is the environmental cost of shipping them from there to here. Then of course there is the prospect of recycling them. The nearest place that is able to recycle TetraPaks is Australia, another environmental cost - shipping them across the Tasman Sea. But, obviously not all of these containers will end up in recycling bins. Many will just end up at the tip. If Mr Hart really did have the environment in mind when he made this decision why did he not look at plastic refillable bottles, like those used widely in Europe?
And one more important issue - milk just tastes better from glass bottles.
November 23rd, 2005 at 11:39 am
Frog,
You do realise the environmental damage done by cleaning the glass bottles don’t you??
November 23rd, 2005 at 12:31 pm
No, how about you enlighten us, oh all knowing one, but do you think you could manage references?
November 23rd, 2005 at 12:44 pm
Stuey,
You didn’t see the news story with Graeme Hart the other night then I take it?? In which he referred to the solution that the bottles (25,000 of which I believe) are cleaned in, as “caustic” and that the move to tetrapaks and the like will be a lesser environmental cost.
November 23rd, 2005 at 2:00 pm
So Andrew, you don’t realise the damage done? No quantification? No references?
“Caustic”? Oh shock horror. So do you realise that producing paper, say for use in Tetrapaks, just for example, also involves a “caustic” solution?
Thought you ACT types were meant to be fond of science (except climatology, of course). Sounds like scary words with little understanding.
I suspect Graeme was not internalising the production of the tetrapaks offshore, the shipment across the planet and disposal in landfill or shipment to Australia for recycling. Don’t claim to know, though. And nor should you, unless you do know, which you clearly don’t.
November 23rd, 2005 at 2:08 pm
Pip,
I take it you are aware of the chemical solutions that Mr Hart’s PRIVATE firm use to sterilise the bottles and an expert on the environmental implications of these??
If you are not I think I would be a little more trusting of Mr Hart- refer to the above linked press release.
November 23rd, 2005 at 3:31 pm
No, Andrew, you shouldn’t assume that, that’s why I say I don’t claim to know.
But let’s get this straight, your initial post strongly hinted that you did realise the environmental damage done by cleaning the glass bottles. Now it’s clear that you don’t have a clue.
And exactly why should you be more trusting of someone with a fairly clear potential ulterior motive because you lack expert knowledge? Blind faith is your suggestion? Thought you didn’t like religion.
November 23rd, 2005 at 3:31 pm
Directly after Hart rabbited about ‘caustic’ use in sterilising glass milk bottles, there was an interview with Nandor in which he pointed out the caustic solution is used again and again in the process and is finally chemically neutralised before getting anywhere near “the environment”.
November 23rd, 2005 at 3:41 pm
“your initial post strongly hinted that you did realise the environmental damage done by cleaning the glass bottles”
any strong hint was purely unintentional.
my point was that a glass milk bottles are also “bad” for the environment, a point frog did not raise in the initial post.
November 23rd, 2005 at 4:07 pm
To me it makes so much sense to dump milk bottles. I cannot remember the last time I even saw a milk bottle. All they have become is some quaint reminder of a age when milk was 5 cents a pint. who really cares - non-event - move on.
November 23rd, 2005 at 4:28 pm
Petermck, do you live in the North Island? You realise there are no glass milk bottles here? Which would explain why you haven’t seen one for a long time? Whoop de way to make an argument. Hell, I’ve never seen the Comalco Smelter, let’s dump it.
Andrew - fair enough, apologies for jumping. Though I’m still curious as to why you capped PRIVATE (really - not sure what you were trying to get across).
And the higher faith in others when you lack expertise to judge their correctness is still a weird one to me.
November 23rd, 2005 at 11:27 pm
Andrew, after the solution is reused, then neutralised, it can then be treated via the normal waste water system in the city.
Unlike the plastic and tetra pak alternatives.
November 24th, 2005 at 2:28 am
The richest guy in the country……………. takes one of natures best foods and turns it into junk!!
God we are stupid.
November 24th, 2005 at 3:53 am
Wellington still has home deliveries of milk (at least in Northland anyway).
No Councils in NZ (that I know of) accept Tetrapaks for recycling.
The Tetrapak that Hart is talking about is the new one which has a lot more plastic than the one most of us are used to. About the top third of the carton is plastic. The shape is different also - the sides are rounded like a bottle and has a lid for pouring the same as that on the large plastic milk containers. These have recently been trialled in the South Island.
This Tetrapak will not biodegrade because of all the extra plastic.
Plastic containers for milk are the worst for your health. Plastic leaches phlalates and bisphenols - cancer causing chemicals (and endocrine disruptors) into the contents. Fat absorbs more of them. Suggest everyone sign the Petition (on the Green Party website) plus lobby David Benson-Pope to retain the milk bottles. Could we please have a postcard to send on the Green Party website - urgently.
November 24th, 2005 at 8:29 am
Glass milk bottles are still used in much of Europe. Indeed in UK, I’ve been told the outcry when their demise was proposed was SO HUGE
the milk companies had to eat humble pie, or rice pudding perhaps, made with milk. Since Graeme Hart is heading to Europe to push for his latest take-over, maybe he could be deluged with milk from glass bottles to make the point.
November 24th, 2005 at 9:17 am
If cartons (all that shipping, etc, etc) are so terribly inefficient, then bottles would be cheaper. But they aren’t.
Lower prices prove better efficiency and less waste (assuming user-pays). The greens see the immediate resource saving of the reusable bottles, but are too short-sighted to see extra labour (and chemicals, etc) required to clean and re-collect bottles. Labour costs money and resources, clearly enough to make bottles less efficient (not that I’m any expert on the process, but clearly Graeme Hart wouldn’t be dumping them if they weren’t).
If a company is dumping an inefficient product in favour of a better one then the greens should be lauding it for its commitment to the environment.
This is why I can’t understand the Green’s opposition to free trade. If a company can produce goods for half the price by shifting production to China instead of New Zealand, then it has halved its resource usage. That should be a good thing, in the eyes of the Greens (and indeed, everyone).
But the anti-capitalist card trumps the environment card every time, doesn’t it.
November 24th, 2005 at 9:28 am
I am hopping mad. This milk distribution issue has made me realise that (very simplisticly) “business” and its mores controls this country. One man who now “owns” the whole of our milk distribution decides how I am to buy my milk according to what is best for his profit, full stop.
Possibly the best thing we can do is to make this issue a “spearhead” into a wider awareness of the ESCALATING STUPIDITY of our collective behaviour …
A “last straw” that will at the least make some South Islanders take a look at what we are doing to this planet, and at individuals’ “powerlessness” to change it unless we start working together.
All this packaging (and carting it all around the world) has gradually crept upon us. There is now a large proportion of younger people in our community who see it as “normal”.
We have been turned into a zombie-like consume-at-any-cost society, with people “too busy” making stuff…importing stuff…consuming stuff… discarding stuff to notice what is happening.
I couldn’t believe it when platic-bottled water from other places came into the supermarkets in Christchurch, where there is pure artesian water in every tap. People must buy these bottles of water however.
(I have used one discarded drink bottle for a couple of years now … I wash it with the dishes and refill it from the tap… cost $0, effort absolutely minimal … water quality the best there is.)
Let’s use this current situation … it has a delightful “idiocy factor” that should appeal.
November 24th, 2005 at 9:52 am
I agree with eredwen. And it’s not an issue of diminishing demand for glass - milk in glass on the shelf has already been taken away. It really isn’t about what the we the consumers choose, it’s about what we choose from what’s left on offer. The responsibility of providing the choices we should have unfortunately seems falls to companies and individuals who are not concerned with offering us the right choices.
Now if I still had the choice, I would buy non-homogenised, organic milk, in glass bottles. I buy the nearest thing, non-homogenised, organic milk in a plastic container, which goes in the recycling. If we get glass back on the shelf I will make that choice, and because I am aware of the pthalates issue, I would also buy more than I do now.
If the right product is offered on the delivery, then I’d choose that too.
How do we get there from here?
November 24th, 2005 at 10:47 am
“Lower prices prove better efficiency and less waste (assuming user-pays).”
Mighty big (and false) assumption, there Percy.
Lower prices prove greater financial efficiency of the company setting the prices (generally), they don’t say anything at all about waste (except in the financial, inefficiency meaning of the term), and they don’t necessarily say anything about big picture efficiency.
In fact, other things being equal, lower prices are likely to mean more waste, it being financially more efficient to dump crap over the back fence than to clean it up - if you can get away with it.
November 24th, 2005 at 11:59 am
Pip, so what you’re saying is we don’t have enough user-pays and private property rights.
Can’t argue with you there. Have you thought about joining ACT?
November 24th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
No Percy, Greens count costs that you are assuming are free, because they aren’t priced into the cost of the use of the commons today.
In other words, if the ACTUAL cost of the Tetrapak, including damage to the environment due to the freight and recycling difficulty, it’s winding up in the tip and all the rest, is counted then the glass will look a lot cheaper than it does now, and the Tetrapak will look a lot dearer. The problem is that the actual costs aren’t counted because we don’t yet price the commons properly.
Since the abuse of the commons isn’t included in the price, the efficiency is not proven by the price. The price only proves the efficiency of stealing from the future, which is what damage to the commons entails.
Pricing the commons has nothing to do with private property rights.
respectfully
BJ
November 24th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
“Last year, however, a couple things happened that left me in the inquiry stage. We visited my aunt and uncle’s farm when they happened to be milking the goats. My kids have always reacted to goats milk. However, this time they went down to the barn with my uncle, milked the goats and proceeded to consume very large quantities of goat milk fresh from the goat before I realized what they were doing. They had had so much fun it crushed me to know in a few hours they would be deathly ill. Evening came and went and neither of them got sick.
Then a couple months ago we were visiting them again and we all tried some homemade ice cream, once again made from raw goat milk. Again, no one became ill. On a subsequent visit to our naturopath, he shared his thoughts on why he felt pasteurized, homogenized milk products were behind the rising rate of heart disease. The pieces began falling into place. Why could my kids drink goat milk fresh from the goat and not get sick? Yet when they were tested, they reacted to store-bought milk and it made them sick. It clicked. the naturopath’s machine tests products in the form that most people use. His machine was testing pasteurized products or commercially prepared products, not products fresh from the farm or cultured in my kitchen. The milk from the store was pasteurized. The milk on the farm was raw.”
“As for raw milk, Cody, my son, has always been tiny. He was full term, but only weighed just over four pounds at birth. His growth rate had always remained below what it should be. At almost six years, he only weighed 32 pounds. He also had been on four different allergy medications—Claritin, Flonase, Tanafed and Extendryl. Two weeks after my finding a source of raw Jersey milk, he no longer needed any medicine.
When I took him to the pediatrician, she wanted to know what I had done because Cody had gained four pounds and grown about one-and-one-half inches in a month. I told her and, surprisingly, she was for it. After all, what could she say? She has been his doctor since his birth.
Another story: Years ago Elton Maddox had a dairy. Some people he knew had a very sick baby. Elton said, “The little thing was as poor as a rail, and cried all of the time.” A baby specialist in Charleston told the baby’s father to find someone with a cow that had not been fresh for more than six weeks, and get the milk for the baby. Elton’s wife told the baby’s father that she was afraid that the milk would be too rich, give the baby diarrhea and that they might lose it. The father said that they were going to lose it anyway, so he wanted to try the milk. Elton separated out a Guernsey, milked her specially for the baby. The next day the baby’s mother wanted him to “come in and see something.” He went in and there was the baby sleeping peacefully. After putting it on the milk, the little thing got better, and did just fine”
As for free market corporate rule idelogues, all i have to say is ……feudalism.
November 24th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
“Last year, however, a couple things happened that left me in the inquiry stage. We visited my aunt and uncle’s farm when they happened to be milking the goats. My kids have always reacted to goats milk. However, this time they went down to the barn with my uncle, milked the goats and proceeded to consume very large quantities of goat milk fresh from the goat before I realized what they were doing. They had had so much fun it crushed me to know in a few hours they would be deathly ill. Evening came and went and neither of them got sick.
Then a couple months ago we were visiting them again and we all tried some homemade ice cream, once again made from raw goat milk. Again, no one became ill. On a subsequent visit to our naturopath, he shared his thoughts on why he felt pasteurized, homogenized milk products were behind the rising rate of heart disease. The pieces began falling into place. Why could my kids drink goat milk fresh from the goat and not get sick? Yet when they were tested, they reacted to store-bought milk and it made them sick. It clicked. the naturopath’s machine tests products in the form that most people use. His machine was testing pasteurized products or commercially prepared products, not products fresh from the farm or cultured in my kitchen. The milk from the store was pasteurized. The milk on the farm was raw.”
November 24th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
“As for raw milk, Cody, my son, has always been tiny. He was full term, but only weighed just over four pounds at birth. His growth rate had always remained below what it should be. At almost six years, he only weighed 32 pounds. He also had been on four different allergy medications—Claritin, Flonase, Tanafed and Extendryl. Two weeks after my finding a source of raw Jersey milk, he no longer needed any medicine.
When I took him to the pediatrician, she wanted to know what I had done because Cody had gained four pounds and grown about one-and-one-half inches in a month. I told her and, surprisingly, she was for it. After all, what could she say? She has been his doctor since his birth.”
November 24th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
Another story: Years ago Elton Maddox had a dairy. Some people he knew had a very sick baby. Elton said, “The little thing was as poor as a rail, and cried all of the time.” A baby specialist in Charleston told the baby’s father to find someone with a cow that had not been fresh for more than six weeks, and get the milk for the baby. Elton’s wife told the baby’s father that she was afraid that the milk would be too rich, give the baby diarrhea and that they might lose it. The father said that they were going to lose it anyway, so he wanted to try the milk. Elton separated out a Guernsey, milked her specially for the baby. The next day the baby’s mother wanted him to “come in and see something.” He went in and there was the baby sleeping peacefully. After putting it on the milk, the little thing got better, and did just fine”
As for free market corporate rule idelogues, all i have to say is ……feudalism
November 24th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
I’ve just been out to the Recovered Materials Foundation (Terra Nova) here in Christchurch - and spoken with the people who have to recycle the plastic and tetra’s AND believe me they know the facts - unlike certain posters here who talk out of the backsides.
The composite tetra/plastic pacakaging will have to be dumped as it currently cannot be reused or recycled, (efficiently or not Percy it makes no difference).
The number 2 plastics are downgraded and cannot be made back into food grade containers - so virgin resins are required for new containers (and guess what the resins are made of. Hint Percy the price is 400% higher now than 5 years ago and it’s not being made anymore).
Each existing glass bottle does over 30 trips. Now that’s 30 containers that RMF doesn’t have to deal with. That’s 30 containers the ratepayers in Chch don’t have to pay to “down cycle” or dispose of. And, when that glass bottle gets a bit tired, you break it and pop it back into a batch of new bottles, ready to do the journey all over again.
RMF are fuming at the lack of consultation.
City rate payers are kept in the dark and expected to pick up the costs of disposal so Graeme Hart can transfer more money into his wallet.
November 25th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
Good one, fastbike and bjchip !!
As bikemike said, all we can do is choose from what’s left on offer.
Please buy Naturalea Organic Non Homogenised, full cream milk which is the ONLY organic milk that still comes in a carton. It is marketed by Mainland in Dunedin. I find it really hard to understand why organic shops stock so much organic milk in plastic containers. It is imperative to support Naturalea before they change to a plastic container or plastic tetrapak. You should be able to find this milk in your supermarket. If not, ask them to get it in.
November 25th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
buzz/bikeman : Thanks for the advice/support.
fastbike : You sound as pissed off as I am. What can we collectively do about the tetra/plastic imported from Sweden (and not on sailing ships) packaging ? Could it become a useful “last straw”?
You (and others) sound as pissed off as I am, and the line “I like pissed off” comes to mind.
eredwen
November 26th, 2005 at 4:04 am
Hope you have all downloaded the Petition from the Green Party website.