OCR Text |
Show STAGGERING WASTE OF MILK CONTAINERS ADDS GREATLY TO COST OF DISTRIBUTION y ' r - d -Pi Tnis Picture, Taken by the Boston City Health Department, Illustrates How Milk Bottles Are Thrown Away by Consumers Practice Is insanitary, Wasteful and Adds to the Cost of Milk. (Prepared by the United States Department Depart-ment of Agriculture.) Who is to blame for the staggering waste of milk bottles in the United States a waste amounting to millions of these containers annually, which adds to the cost of distribution, is a factor in the price of milk, and in the end is paid for by consumers? To answer this question and determine ways of remedying the situation, dairy specialists of the United States department de-partment of agriculture made an investigation. in-vestigation. Responsibility for the waste, they learned, is widely distributed. dis-tributed. The average milk bottle is shortlived. short-lived. It makes only about 17 trips before it is broken or lost, the specialists special-ists found. For every consumer who has a quart of milk delivered at the door each day, the dealer in the course of a year has to supply 20 new bottles. The Investigation, conducted in S6 cities, shows that the average milk dealer buys 17,649 new bottles a month, and the large dealers buy more than 90,000 a month, which are largely, though not entirely, replacement stock. Junk Dealers Profit. In 16 cities included in the investigation, investi-gation, more than 8,000,000 sound milk bottles are collected annually from the city dumps. In some cities the busi ness carried on by Junk dealers is one of the most serious sources of milk-bottle milk-bottle loss. Not only do they sell the bottles to dealers in the city, but often ship them to other towns. Most states have no laws restricting this traffic. Of SO cities furnishing information to the department only 33 had milk bottle exchanges or places where milk bottles from all sources are sorted out and returned to the owner, provided he is a member of the exchange. Few States Regulate. Only 19 states have regulations governing gov-erning the use of milk bottles, and of the SO cities studied 72 reported the use by dealers of other dealers' bottles. bot-tles. Various plans, inducements, and charges for bottles have been tried according ac-cording to reports from 61 dealers and 47 health officers. The department of agriculture has summarized the most practical methods, as given above, and is now distributing the Information to milk plants and other persons interested. inter-ested. Federal experts are still working work-ing on the problem of milk bottle losses and point out that the abnormal abnor-mal waste is ultimately borne by the public, which should take an active Interest in the question, encouraging educational efforts and suitable regulations. |