Newfangled milk jugs

Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth

Excerpt:

But with the new jugs, the milk crates are gone. Instead, a machine stacks the jugs, with cardboard sheets between layers. Then the entire pallet, four layers high, is shrink-wrapped and moved with a forklift.

The company estimates this kind of shipping has cut labor by half and water use by 60 to 70 percent. More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam’s Club coolers, and no empty crates need to be picked up, reducing trips to each Sam’s Club store to two a week, from five — a big fuel savings. Also, Sam’s Club can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80.

The whole operation is so much more efficient that milk coming out of a cow in the morning winds up at a Sam’s Club store by that afternoon, compared with several hours later or the next morning by the old method. “That’s our idea of fresh milk,” Greg Soehnlen, a vice president at Creative Edge, said.

Sam’s Club started using the boxy jugs in November, and they are now in 189 stores scattered around the country. They will appear soon in more Sam’s Club stores and perhaps in Wal-Marts.


Comments: Not all consumers are enthused. (For the Peets, we only drink a couple of quarts of milk a week!). Be sure to view the NYTimes graphic associated with the article.