What is happening in the retail milk market? There was a time when milk was produced locally, every town had a dairy, glass bottles were used and reused time and time again, and the milk did not travel miles and miles up and down motorways. Even the foil caps were salvaged and collected for charity. But along came the supermarkets and completely destroyed all that with their plastic bottles and coloured caps. Completely fed up with derisory milk prices, dairy farmers are taking things into their own hands and setting up milk dispensing machines in and around villages a towns.In an effort to reduce dependency on plastic Freshways have installed a cartoning machine, in their dairy near Wickham, Southern Hampshire. These cartons have just arrived in our village shop. I expect it will take the consumer time to get used to cartons, but the cartons are largely made from paper board, from commercial forests, and is fully recyclable. The milk that we don’t use for cheesemaking all goes to Freshways, so local milk from Hampshire farmers is making its way back into local shops. Every shop and customer needs to support this initiative, it is a big step in the right direction.
