Brendan Palmer February 13th 2014
From time to time we hear nostalgic regrets about the demise of the lowly milk bottle, the clink of the glass in the early morning, the washing of the bottles and putting them outside the door, as the last daily action before retiring for the night, a daily ritual that has been promoted as the ultimate in environmentally friendly consumption.

Or is it? The following numbers relate to large movements of milk using trucks capable of a 24 tonne payload.

To move 23,500 litres of milk using Tetra Pac Cartons or plastic bottles means transporting a total of 24 tonnes. 23.5 tonnes of outward payload (Milk)  and 500kg of packaging, . This packaging can be recycled in our green recycling bins

To deliver 23,500 litres of milk using glass bottles, each bottle weighing 0.35kg and containing a half litre of milk (1 pint), would mean an outward payload of 49,950kg (49.9t) and a return payload of 16,450kg (16.5t) of empty glass. We now need two trucks to do the delivery (if we are limited to 24 tonnes per truck, we can’t deliver all the milk) To simplify the calculation let’s just send an extra 24 tonne truck along with the delivery and then have it collect the empty glass for return to the refilling plant.

The above of course only gets the milk to the distribution warehouse or supermarket, the extra 16.5 tonnes of glass then has to be transported (although in smaller lots , milk floats etc) to the end user and back again, once they have used the milk.

Once the glass is returned to the refilling plant, it must first be sent to a washing and testing line to be examined for contaminants or cracks and then transported to the filling lines.

Again for simplicities sake let’s just assume that the milk bottle moves four times for each usage. So for each pint of milk consumed we move 1.4 kg of glass.( 0.35kg per bottle X four movements.)

If each person in Ireland consumed 1 pint of milk per day there would be a need to transport 5600 (Five thousand Six Hundred) tonnes of glass about the place every day

To transport 2 million litres of milk in cartons or plastic bottles  requires 50 tonnes of recyclable packaging

In the UK it would be 80,000 (Eighty Thousand) tonnes of glass per day which would be about 3,500 extra large truck movements per day

Apart from the economic cost of moving all this extra weight around, perhaps the environmental consequences require that the lowly milk bottle be left consigned to nostalgia and the happy times when ignorance was bliss

Back-up numbers
Weight of 1 milk bottle = 0.35 kg
Weight of Plastic or Tetra Pak carton= 0.025kg
Weight of one litre of milk= 1kg

One of a series of Blogs as part of a sustainability study course
Sustainability, society and you:  The University of Nottingham

In Ireland, The re-emergence of most of the traditional Irish crafts has accelerated in recent years with a huge number of individuals and small businesses re-learning traditional crafts and applying them to products that can be used in our modern life.
See http://www.giveirishcraft.com/

Although not listed on the Give Irish Gifts link, my brother-in law, Paul Moore, is an artist in wood, making everything from small cutting boards to, dining suites, full kitchens and traditional bar fitout. All from native hardwood Irish trees, many of which are the victims of winter storms

His style is pretty unique as he does very little forming, preferring to let the nature of the original tree flow through his pieces.  Although Paul could make 20 coffee tables from one tree, each one of those coffee tables is completely unique and cannot be copied.

Living rood Display

                                       Click here for full Paul Moore Furniture Design Site

A 400 year old tree being converted to a piece of furniture that will last for up to another 400 years and even then can be used as biodegradable compost for the next tree to take 400 years to grow. Perhaps a definitive description of sustainability

Checking out at the supermarket, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment

The woman apologised and explained, “We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my earlier days.”

The young cashier responded, “That’s our problem today – your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the ‘green thing’ in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, lemonade bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilised and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.
(Brendan Palmer comments: This is rubbish, see my blog Moving Milk in Glass Bottles.

But we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.

Grocery shops bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we re-used for numerous things, most memorable besides household bags for rubbish, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school), was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalise our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn’t do the “green thing” back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have a lift in every supermarket, shop and office building. We walked to the local shop and didn’t climb into a 300 horsepower machine every time we had to go half a mile.

But she was right. We didn’t have the “green thing” in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s terry towel nappies because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 3 kilowatts – wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids had hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.

Back then, we had one radio or TV in the house – not a TV in every room and the TV had a small screen the size of a big handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Scotland In the kitchen. We blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We pushed the mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.

We drank from a tap or bubbler when we were thirsty, instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.

Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their Mums into a 24-hour taxi service in the family’s £50,000 ‘People Carrier’ which cost the same as a whole house did before the “green thing.” We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances and we didn’t need a computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest Pub!

But isn’t it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the “green thing” back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart arse young person…

We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off…especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartarse who can’t work out the change without the cash register telling them how much it is!

Here endeth the bloody lesson!

One of a series of Blogs as part of a sustainability study course
Sustainability, society and you:  The University of Nottingham

M&S have improved energy efficiency in their stores by 23% and their warehouses by 24%, relative to 2007 (M&S, 2011). M&S have also met their target to improve the fuel efficiency of their delivery fleets by 20% (M&S, 2011). Their total carbon emissions reduced by 13% from 2007 whilst their sales floor footage continued to grow (M&S, 2011). This demonstrates that M&S have been able to develop their business while at the same time “incorporate a range of sustainability policies, including improvements in energy efficiency.” !!

Importantly, M&S have proved that sustainability makes good business sense, by generating a net benefit of over £70m through Plan A in 2011.

The above extracts are the “new wave” way of presenting what was traditionally known as cost savings and could be restated in the company’s annual report as follows

Costs
Stores energy                  down 23%
Warehouse energy         down 24%
Transport costs               down 20%
Total savings                    £70m

When a business sells an item, the amount of the sale goes to the top of the Profit and Loss column. All the costs relating to making that sale are then deducted and the remaining amount goes to “The Bottom Line”  this is the net margin.  The Nett Margin for M&S is 4.96% so for every £100 of turnover, M&S get £4.96 http://www.google.co.uk/finance?cid=15957148

Savings on the other hand go straight to the bottom line so in order to put £70m onto the bottom line M&S would have to sell an extra  £1.4bn (billion) of goods. Their revenues for 2013 were £10bn http://corporate.marksandspencer.com/documents/publications/2013/annual_report_2013.pdf

So,  in order for them to make £70million from sales as opposed to savings they would have to increase the size of their business by 14%

Of course the reduction in energy usage is a good thing and being able to service their customers with a footprint that is 14% smaller than it might be is a welcome contribution to overall sustainability, but lets us be very certain that in this context  “sustainability” is the marketing word for reducing costs, which is what every business that hopes to survive does on a constant basis.

The real sustainability issue is this, should  70% of the food we consume be controlled by 4/5 Supermarket chains, and what effect does their need to cut costs have on the quality of the food that they provide for us to eat.

I have been doing research on this subject for another blog I write called “A city boy on farming” and the story is not good