> So you’d ask, what about reusable milk cans or kegs to supply cafes? Again. No.
Every time I go to a coffeehouse I see that, even in the biggest chains, baristas serve milks (animal/plant based) from normal bottles. I have always wondered why is that: aside of how wasteful it is, isn't it also more expensive?
The word “wasteful” is only meaningful in the context of a valuable resource that is being consumed. Automated manufacturing of disposable containers uses very little valuable resources, as is reflected in their monetary cost. The logistics of reusing more durable containers consumes substantial valuable human resources, resulting in the use of the solution that is consuming the least, on a value basis.
Human time is not free, and manufactured goods are far less expensive than people imagine, because they are not produced by human labor. The cost to mechanically produce a disposable package is not the same as it intuitively would cost you personally to make a package.
What about the investment in fuel, energy, water, and detergents: to collect the reusable containers, bring them to a sorting facility, sort them, bring them to the manufacturer, and wash them before they can be refilled?
Disposable containers are much lighter and cheaper since they don't need to be so durable for repeated washing and filling. The additional fuel costs of shipping heavier reusable containers around must be pretty substantial in itself, let alone all of the other steps.
And that's the problem in a nutshell: it's very easy to calculate the cost of mass-producing disposable packaging. It's much harder to calculate the cost of disposing of it (i.e. the impact on the environment).
Apparently the cost to use disposable packages, including disposing them after use, is lower than the cost of recycling for this particular chain. Most likely it is not really the cost of separating the containers into a separate bin or whatever, but the separate logistics train back to the manufacturer that costs more. The logistics to remove waste are there anyway, so if you can reuse that for packaging all the better.
While arguably the total costs including pollution are greater for disposable packaging, most of those costs are not borne by the corporation and so it makes sense (for the corporation) to skip using recyclable packaging unless there are other factors (for example, there are customers who will pay extra for the warm feeling of knowing they are helping to reduce waste).
I've just started going to a cafe in London which uses a kind of tap to fill the milk jug from a keg. They get a keg delivered, and then when the keg's empty it goes back, gets cleaned and refilled for another customer. It's one of those things that when you see it, you think why isn't everywhere doing this? Especially eco-conscious coffee shops.
The pub and bar industry seem to have it figured out. I get that it's milk so it'd probably need doing more frequently but as starting points go it's probably not a bad one
It may have something to do with getting back and cleaning up the reusable containers afterwards.
I remember that in Germany my school had a system to sell little glas milk bottles, and they were reused. Milk is still sold in glass bottles sometimes, but these bottles are just recycled.
> So you’d ask, what about reusable milk cans or kegs to supply cafes? Again. No.
Every time I go to a coffeehouse I see that, even in the biggest chains, baristas serve milks (animal/plant based) from normal bottles. I have always wondered why is that: aside of how wasteful it is, isn't it also more expensive?