Is Greener Packaging Worth a Little Spilled Milk?

The Wal-Mart/Sam's Club empire made waves this week with the introduction of their new, square milk jug. Designed to improve space efficiency, reduce waste, and cut costs, the new jugs are a boon for sustainability and packaging innovation, but are proving tricky for some customers, who are having trouble pouring the milk without spilling some of it. It begs the question: Is sustainable innovation worth a little spilled milk?

First, what kind of innovation are we talking about here? To begin, anything that a retailer the size of Wal-Mart and/or Sam's Club does is going to have a huge impact across the board, just because of the incredible scale required to get it done; it doesn't even have to be the whole company that does it (so far, Sam's Club is offering case-less milk gallons in 189 clubs. The milk is available in most Sam's Club locations in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee).

That said, the big story with the new jug is that it requires much less space and is easier to pack. Traditional milk jugs can't be stacked on one another by themselves, so they require milk crates for bulk storage and transport. That means the milk crates, though reusable, use up space on return trips in delivery trucks, and have to be returned somewhere that can use them, and washed before they can help transport milk again; Dan Soehnlen, president of Superior Dairy (which is the company that invented and began using the square jug in 1998), said 100,000 gallons of water a day are used at his dairy alone to keep the crates clean. Using the old jugs and the crates, four to five trips are required each week to deliver milk to a typical Sam's Club.

By contrast, the new containers have flat tops and ridged sides, allowing for multiple stacking with a layer of cardboard in between each row and shrinkwrap around the outside to hold it all together. By eliminating the crates, no water is needed to wash them between deliveries, and no labor is required to return and wash the crates. After a single use, the cardboard and shrink wrap are recycled; by eliminating the crates, each truck can fit more milk -- the new containers store 4.5 gallons of milk in a cubic foot, versus 3 gallons in the old crate system -- so only two delivery trips are required each week, further cutting costs for fuel and labor needed. What difference does that make? "We're estimating it could be up to 11,000 trucks we're reducing on the road this year," said Daniel Book, marketing manager for Sam's Club.

So, it's a pretty great deal for Sam's Club, which can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80, and a good deal for dairies, who don't have to use as many resources or as much labor with the crate system. Though recycling replaces reuse -- something that TreeHugger isn't crazy about -- I can't deny the green benefits and am willing to give the idea a thumbs up. Plus, to top it all off, it saves consumers 10 to 20 cents per gallon of milk, and cost savings is what brings many shoppers in to the discount mega-stores. So why isn't everyone jumping up and down for joy?

The new jugs pour differently than the old ones, and that has more than a few customers crying over their spilled milk (sorry, couldn't resist). "I hate it," said one Lisa DeHoff, a cafe owner, after buying the new jug in an Ohio Sam's Club. "It spills everywhere," said another customer, Amy Wise. Apparently, it's more of a "tilt-'n-pour" operation than the "lift-'n-pour" many are used to with the old jug. Is this a legitimate problem, or complaints just because something is a little new and a little different?

While my initial reaction is to say something like, "Hey, we just sent a lander to Mars (again!) -- the human race can figure out how to pour a gallon of milk without spilling it, so deal with it," I realize that change doesn't happen overnight. If Al Gore had his way, we would have had meaningful global warming legislation passed two years ago, right after everyone saw his movie (that will soon be an opera), and, yet, we wait (and that's a whole new story for a different day).

Anyway, the point is that, yes, sustainable innovations like these are worth a little spilled milk, if that's what it takes to cut 100,000 gallons of water use per day from a single dairy, or take 11,000 hulking milk trucks off the road each year. Plus, there's also the chance that the "Wal-Mart effect" -- the notion that they influence enough suppliers to change entire industries at the flip of a switch -- can be used for good, and that inefficient milk jugs will be a thing of the past everywhere, and not just at warehouse stores and mega-marts. It's big-picture improvements vs. small-picture inconveniences; with an entity as big as Wal-Mart, you can bet that the big picture is going to win every time.

Does this change the way you think about Wal-mart? Will stuff like this -- sustainable packaging vs. some consumer backlash --be good or bad for the green movement? Let me know what you think in the comments!

More milk jug and packaging design-related reading in TreeHugger
Gallon Milk Jug Gets Redesigned For a Low Carbon World
Forget the Jugs; Milk Bags a Hit in Canada, UK
How to Make Milk Jugs Lighter? Take the Handle Off

More Wal-mart-related reading in TreeHugger
The TH Interview: Andy Ruben & Matt Kissler of Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart: The Next Steps Toward Sustainability
It's Getting Harder to Hate Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart's Environmental Chief "Reassigned" -- Hmm

More on Wal-mart in Huffington Post
Costco, Wal-Mart's New Milk Jug: More Efficient, Less Popular
Wal-Mart Goes Local ... So?
Wal-Mart Kicks an Injured Cop When He is Down

Photos: David Maxwell for The New York Times

Comments

[DuPageDem]

This isn't Wal-Mart's idea. Costco, a much better company to workers and vendors, has been using these for many months.

[dapperd72]

This entire discussion misses on the fundamental issue: whether humans should consume milk of another species in the first place, let alone past weaning. As the only mammalian species that voluntarily does exactly this, the practice makes no physiological sense, as cows' milk was meant only for infant bovines, whose bodies grow at much faster rates than humans, which is precisely why no mammal is designed by nature to drink the milk of another species. Many physical ailments result from this perverse practice of breastfeeding from bovine udders and calling it "natural." Among these are child & adult-onset diabetes, colic, asthma, bronchitis, allergic rhinitis, cancer of breast, ovaries & other vital organs, heart attacks, strokes, among others. Research this scandalous phenomenon at www.pcrm.org and www.notmilk.com for scientific facts that contradict the popular industry propaganda.

The dairy industry is inherently antithetical to any semblance of environmental protection. Animal products require far more than natural resources to process than fruits and vegetables. The lower one eats on the food chain, the lesser impact she/he has on Earth.

Anyone who claims to care about the planet is also behooved to boycott companies such as Walmart that historically have been detrimental to local economies where small businesses are bankrupted by Walmart buying out the competition. The company is also notorious for treating its employees like scum and firing them if they attempt unionization. Read Barbara Ehrenreich's book, "Nickled & Dimed" for an inside expose of their shameful business practices.

[PennP]

Wal-Mart has created a milk container that looks virtuously "green" but creates unnecessary product waste. That represents an increase in the cost-per-consumed-ounce to many consumers, and will probably lead to more frequent purchases of milk--more trips to the store, gasoline used, CO2 generated... Is this green?

What I see in this story is a badly designed container that will generate good PR for W-M, reduce W-M's transportation and material costs, and likely generate a cost-free increase overall sales. Looks like W-M has got another win-win-win on its end. Remind me again--how does the consumer benefit from this?

[alanmk]

Please explain how the new container "creates unnecessary product waste". It is still a gallon container.

Another side benefit to the crate-less storage is refrigeration cost, albeit small....more product per square foot is being cooled rather than with the (additional) plastic crates. Cooling efficiency (for the equipment) could go up, overall energy cost could go down. Hey, it's something.

[alanmk]

Another great idea, of course, would be if Walmart would actually contract with local American fabricators to manufacture the new containers. Not only would that help our local economies, it would further reduce the fuel and travel costs getting the containers to the local dairies producing the milk. Perhaps a bright mind within Walmart has already thought of this. Hmmm....

[alanmk]

Simple solution....create a reusable, recyclable spout, which could be incorporated into each cap. Twist and open the cap, turn the cap over, and voila....a spout. A few more cents of cost perhaps, but would take up no more space. This idea would further reduce a potential proliferation of individual spouts made to solve the problem (and necessitating a separate product line requiring cardboard packaging) as well.