Back to milkmen & refillable bottles? – The Wall Street Journal

DUBLIN – I never had a milkman, but I've seen them on TV. The idea was that every evening you'd put out your empty glass milk bottles and some person would come around first thing in the morning and refill your bottles with milk (or perhaps they would give you different, filled glass bottles and take yours back to wash – as I said, I've only seen this on TV). Decades ago, many products were apparently delivered in a similar way. But over the intervening years, we've become addicted to disposable, plastic containers and single servings. The practice has increased the convenience of our lifestyles but has also imposed some very serious externalities in the form of mountains and mountains of plastic waste. As we speak, there's a floating mountain of plastic more than three times bigger than France in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Clearly, something must be done before we get ourselves into real trouble. One solution being advocated by some major consumer brands is a return to and an expansion of that old-fashioned milkman system – using metal or glass containers that can be refilled many times. It's an interesting notion, although I suspect that for most people, the inconvenience will outweigh the importance of saving the planet. It's human nature, I'm afraid. – Felicity Duncan

The World's Biggest Brands Want You to Refill Your Orange Juice and Deodorant

By Saabira Chaudhuri

The world's biggest makers of shampoo, detergent and packaged food will test selling their products in reusable containers, adopting a milkman-style model to address mounting concerns about plastic waste.

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