Easter 2021 marks two years since we launched Milk in Glass and we’ve been blown away by the support from our retailers, supporters, followers and the community. When we kicked off our Milk In Glass initiative, our main goal was to put a dent in the amount of plastic packaging we use...
...and we have! To date we’ve saved over 17,000 kilos of plastic. To put that in perspective, we're told that this equates to the weight of about 13 Volkswagen Kombi vans. Now, that's a LOT of plastic bottles!
We now deliver over 5000 reusable glass bottles of organic milk weekly, to over 50 retailers Victoria-wide, with a return rate of 88% of bottles refilled and reissued in 2020. The year was understandably a difficult year for returning bottles, with movement restricted in Victoria and lockdown orders in place, but we were still really pleased with this return rate result. We expect the return rate to head back closer to 100% in 2021.
On average, every bottle that has left the dairy full of beautiful, fresh, full-cream milk has been returned, refilled and sent out again 8 times. This number is much higher than what we thought it would be, and we couldn't be more proud - plus, as time goes on, the glass bottles number of reuses only continues to grow past 8 times which is fantastic!
Here are some of the cold hard (or in our case, cool and milky) facts from two years of Milk in Glass:
In addition, in 2020 we were nominated as a finalist in the Innovative Products or Services category of the Premier’s Sustainability Awards for our Milk in Glass Bottles initiative. Even though we did not win our categories award we were humbled to be recognised for our Milk in Glass initiative.
So, we wanted to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has passionately bought our Milk in Glass and returned their bottles! It's YOU that has allowed us to have had such impressive success in our first two years. Let's keep these amazing stats continuing throughout this next year. We also wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who supported our Pozible crowdfunding campaign in 2018. Because of you, we were able to begin this journey of sustainability and less environmental impact.
So thank you all. We’re raising a glass (bottle) to everyone who continues to support this initiative! If you’re interested in purchasing Schulz Organic Dairy Milk in Glass from a retailer near you, you can suggest a retailer here.
Cheers,
Team Schulz
