Do you remember a time when the milkman would come around to your doorstep to deliver fresh milk in glass bottles? If you don’t, what do you think of reintroducing the concept to our islands? Here me out…

What's happening in the UK

The milkman has made a comeback in the UK in recent years, with millennials taking a stand and being more environmentally cautious in the hopes of becoming more sustainable. A UK article revealed that, “It turns out that many will pay a little more for a service, if it’s [a] better bid to help the environment,” so much so that companies are seeing an increase in demand for glass bottle distribution. A depot manager of a UK dairy company stated that people are actually asking if they produce products in glass bottles as opposed to cartons.

The milkman in Malta

Home deliveries provided by the milkman or farmers was part of the daily routine up to the mid-21^st century, something as common as driving your car to work nowadays. Before the age of pasteurisation, farmers and milkmen would distribute milk bottles door-to-door, even directly from the goat itself. Now that’s a blast from the past!

The Milk Centre was opened on 11^th May 1938, thanks to the research that Sir Temi Zammit did on proper pasteurisation, and milk started to be distributed in electrically driven vans in certain locations. For a while during the war though, rationed powdered milk was given out instead, but pasteurisation and distribution of fresh milk started again in 1943.

People also like to collect the antique MMU milk bottles nowadays, because let’s face it, they’re relics at this point. But what if we could have 2019 versions of these milk glass bottles?

Should we bring back the milkman?

Think about it. Based off personal experience, an average Maltese family could consume around four milk cartons per week (if not more) – be it dairy or plant-based. That’s four milk cartons thrown into the trash every week (recycled, granted), but still. That’s an average of 208 cartons per year per family. What if you could have those same four cartons of milk but in re-usable glass bottles, to make the matter more sustainable?

While we’d probably need to pay a little extra, as was done in the UK, we’d be saving so much more in the long run. Because all we’d need to do is refill the glass bottles we’ve already got, or exchange our empty ones with the filled ones from the milkman. Now I’m just hypothesising here, but this could actually work.

What do you think?