To ensure they could sell milk as competitively as possible and cheaper to produce3, plastic bottles became the norm. They were also lighter than glass packaging and suffered from fewer breakages, making them perfect for the high volumes of milk sales supermarkets began to enjoy.
In the 1950s, glass was becoming too hard to manage and keep up with. It made the crates heavy, there were a lot of damages when transporting the bottles to and from home deliveries, and the quality factor of making sure they were properly cleaned before re-using became too much of a problem.
You don't have to be an old fogey to remember when milk came in bottles, but you do need a memory that stretches back to the last century: milk bottles started to be replaced by cartons in the early 1970s when supermarkets took over from the milkman, and by the late 1980s they were just about history.
Today in most supermarkets, you can find tasty offers of fresh milk packaged in glass containers.
Although glass bottles can still be found, the majority of them have been phased out. Some of the downsides of glass is it's more easily breakable and distribution costs can be higher due to the added weight. There are also concerns around light impacting nutrients, vitamins, and proteins in milk.
Eventually, the glass bottle was overshadowed by the plastic model, as it was much easier and less expensive to transport plastic safely. Plastic bottles were considered to be more lightweight, resistant to breakage, and therefore superior in every way when compared to glass bottles.
From a distribution point of view, I assume plastic bottles also strengthened markets where brands had limited infrastructure to handle the logistics of first selling and then collecting glass bottles. Ultimately, with plastic, brands had more freedom. Glass was just not convenient.
Glass milk bottles have been around for many years, and although numbers began to dwindle back in the 90s and early 2000's, there has been a growing trend towards the use of reusable glass bottles for milk, which has led to a resurgence in popularity for glass milk bottles across the country.
Milk Bottles Make Milk Tastes Better
Glass bottles don't transfer a foreign scent and taste into the milk, the way paper or plastic containers do. Drinking milk from glass bottles is the only way to get that delicious true milk taste. The tastier the milk, the more likely kids will drink it.
Glass bottles are the best containers to store milk in for a number of reasons. They're safer as they do not pose the risk of chemical leaching, unlike plastic bottles that could contaminate the milk with BPA and other substances. Glass bottles are also sturdier and more leakproof, making them easier to use.
Transfer milk to glass bottles. It will last twice as long. Glass gets and stays much colder than cardboard. Also, glass bottles are better sealed than cardboard containers, so they don't let as much air in.
On one hand, milk glass was produced consistently for decades, so there's a lot of it out there (and a handful of companies are still producing it today). So, according to Love to Know, the typical milk glass vase you'd find at a garage sale or antique shop isn't worth more than $10 to $30 per piece.
Blow molded plastic milk bottles have been in use since the 1960s. HDPE is the primary material but polyester is also used. A wide variety of milk bottle designs are available.
Not only is milk a great vegetarian protein source, but it's also packed with calcium and vitamin D—two nutrients that are vital for bone health. Calcium is a mineral needed to build and maintain strong bones, and vitamin D helps our body absorb calcium from the foods we eat.
It takes just a single glass of milk to achieve 25% of the daily recommendation for calcium and 15% of the recommendation for vitamin D. No matter your age, drinking milk regularly can help maintain muscle and preserve bone strength to lower risk for fractures and osteoporosis.
The final results show that, while glass remains an ideal container for preserving milk flavor, plastic containers provide additional benefits while also maintaining freshness in the absence of light exposure.
A glass milk bottle can be washed and reused around 25-30 times on average before recycling, depending on the number of times it's returned. And glass can be recycled an infinite number of times.
The arguments against glass and adhering to plastic bottles, are largely: Weight in distribution costs. Its susceptibility to fracture when dropped which could result in laceration injuries from explosive failure if the bottle contents are pressurised from carbonation.
By 2030, the company aims to have at least 25% of all beverages globally across its portfolio of brands sold in refillable/returnable glass or plastic bottles, or in refillable containers through traditional fountain or Coca‑Cola Freestyle dispensers.
In the United States, Mexican Coca-Cola, or Mexican Coke (Spanish: Coca Cola de Vidrio, English: Glass Coca-Cola, or Coca-Cola in a glass bottle) or, informally, "Mexicoke", refers to Coca-Cola produced in and imported from Mexico.
Glass changes the flavor less than plastic or aluminum.
As the least chemically reactive of our three materials, glass doesn't alter taste as much—so if you want to enjoy Coke the way it's meant to be enjoyed, go for glass.
In the past four years, according to PepsiCo's internal estimates, glass bottles dropped to around 19% of total carbonated beverages packaging from around 46%. Companies have even brought single-serve PET bottles (250 ml and 300 ml) to eventually replace returnable glass bottles.
Coke Bottle Values
Values can range from a few dollars to hundreds or even thousands: Regular, vintage Coke bottles start at around $10, and anniversary models or special editions can sell for about $30, reports Country Living.
Before you buy or sell a milk bottle, it helps to know how much it's worth. These bottles can range from about $10 to $200 or more, depending on a number of factors. Assigning value to your bottle isn't an exact science, but it's important to get some sense of the price it should fetch.
Plastic milk bottles go through mechanical and manual sorting to remove any non-recyclable materials that accidentally end up in the load. The plastic milk bottles are then flattened and baled before being transported to a polymer recycling facility.