Pleasant Meadow Creamery bottles

Glass milk bottles are better.

Pleasant Meadow Creamery bottles our superior Guernsey milk in glass milk bottles.

We wouldn’t even consider taking the finest milk on earth – grass-fed, A2A2, whole cream-top, raw unpasteurized, Guernsey cow milk – and putting it in a petro-chemical container like plastic.

Milk should be good for you, and the container should enhance the goodness.

Some of our competition bottles in “plastic jugs” “for your convenience”.  Folks, if you want convenience, please, by all means, buy our competitor’s milk and live with the consequences of all that plastic “convenience”.

Our glass bottles require commitment and responsibility from you.  We want you to rinse them, and we want you to return them to the store where you purchased the milk.  You will get your deposit back, or applied to your next purchase, and we will take the trouble to run them through our bottle washer and re-use them.  It’s good stewardship.  It’s good for you.  It’s good for the earth.  It’s good for future generations.  It tastes better.  It’s a superior container for a superior product.

To say again – we wouldn’t even consider bottling our superior milk in inferior plastic “jugs”.

Our glass bottles have a deposit to encourage you to return them to the store on your next purchase

You will notice the sticker price on our milk is much higher than the milk around us, but what you may not know is each bottle has a deposit of up to $3.75 or other depending on size built in that price.

Specifically, the deposits are $3.75 for half gallon bottles, $2.00 for quart bottles, and $1.50 for pints.  These deposits are just about equal to our costs for the bottles.  In some cases, like the half gallons, the replacement cost, counting shipping, is actually slightly higher than the deposit.

When you first purchase the milk, you pay that deposit.  When you rinse and return the bottle to your retailer, the deposit is credited back to you or applied to your next purchase.  Therefore, the price you are paying for the milk is significantly less than the sticker price, and you are encouraged to return those bottles to the store so they come back to us for sanitary wash and re-use.

We appreciate your help in both rinsing these bottles before you return them to the store (which helps us get them clean for re-use), and especially for returning them so they can be re-used.  Bottles that don’t come back cost us in replacement time and expense and don’t help us keep the price as low as possible for you.

We are blessed to have choices in north Idaho for milk.  A consumer can find raw goat’s milk in plastic, raw goat’s milk in glass, and our milk, to name a few.  We will always bottle our milk in glass because glass is simply an exceedingly superior container for the best milk on earth.

Glass flavor is better

Glass is inert compared to plastic when it comes to flavor.  Let’s face it, plastic is made from hydrocarbons – not fit for human consumption certainly – and leaches a certain amount of it’s material into the flavor of the food contained therein, no matter claims to the contrary.

Raw milk, by its nature, is perishable and susceptible to contamination from its environment.  Why bottle in plastic, which taints the flavor, when one can bottle in glass, which is inert and does not in any way negatively affect the flavor or composition of the milk?

Cost and weight are more for glass

Probably, the number one reason dairies bottle milk in plastic is cost and weight. Yes, glass costs more and weighs more.  A truckload of glass bottled milk is going to weigh more than a truckload of plastic bottled milk, and the production cost of that truckload will be less.

However, glass is such a superior milk container, it is worth using.

Would you buy your good wine in plastic bottles?  How about your very excellent beer?  We didn’t think so.

Glass has breakage on occasion, but plastic even moreso

If you drop a glass bottle, yes, it likely will shatter.  Nevertheless, while stocking our milk over the years on the store shelves, we can’t even begin to count how many “leakers” we’ve seen on shelves that were plastic bottles with pin hole leaks.  Look below a dairy cooler case and see the plastic lining?  Note all the dried milk on it.  Yes, that’s from leakers, and any bottle that gets a pin hole leak gets pulled, tossed, and wasted.

Plastic ends up in the landfill and oceans

The majority of those plastic milk jugs go to the land fill and ocean despite being recyclable.  Right now, this is a huge problem worldwide.  Europe is beginning to address the problem with bans on single-use plastic, but go down to your local waste processing center and transfer station and see how much recyclable plastic is heading for landfills and you’ll realize there is just as much of that as single use plastic.  Plus, much of the ocean trash comprises recyclable beverage bottles.

Our glass bottles come back to us, get a sanitary wash, and get reused over and over.

Enjoy your glass-bottled grass-fed A2A2 Guernsey Goodness Idaho raw milk from Pleasant Meadow Creamery!