Daily pinta

Remember when everyone had their milk delivered by a cheery chap with a white jacket and a worn brown satchel for collecting the money? Then supermarkets got in on the act and you could buy 4 or 6 pints in one go, and it all seemed so much more convenient that way...

Ever since I left home I've always bought milk in plastic bottles, on the premise that milk deliveries seemed to be getting later in the day (where they still existed), and I didn't want the milk to go off sat on the doorstep all day, especially in the summer.

Then just a couple of weeks ago a newspaper article made me think again, and another one has since galvanised me further. Due to the falling price of milk, partly driven by supermarket 'price wars', there are now half the number of dairy farmers in the UK as there were a decade ago, and if things carry on in the same vein (including a continuing increase in dairy product consumption), the UK will need to import milk within the next few years to meet demand. How mad is that?! Apparently some organic milk is already imported.

A milkman calls mid-morning, three times a week in our road, and one Saturday I nipped out to ask how to go about setting up a delivery. All I had to do was email/phone the dairy with my order, and wait. You can amend delivery details online, including changes to the products you want and the days you want them delivered (e.g. to account for holidays/house guests etc).



So far so good. We are having milk and fresh orange juice (also in glass bottles) delivered twice a week. The juice is lovely, and our main motivator for ordering that is to cut down on the waste generated by the laminated cardboard cartons the supermarket variety comes in, which we can't recycle in our area.

I plan on buying a 'milk minder' to keep the bottles cool on summer days before we can get home and put them in the fridge. I am a little bit apprehensive about this, but time will tell. We may just have to be more organised and order deliveries for days when we know we'll be at home. Updates will appear here!

Useful links:

www.expressdairies.co.uk
www.dairycrest.co.uk

Both companies offer a postcode search facility which will tell you if your address is on a delivery route.

Give it a go - if it doesn't suit your needs, you can always cancel, and if you do persevere, you'll be supporting your local milkman and reducing waste.