Tuesday, February 21, 2006

THE WHITE STUFF

We are big dairy fans in this household ( not that it is good for us if we have too much of it), but then again, we have had no broken bones (plenty of other things wrong but no broken bones). The reason why we are fond of dairy stuff is simply that my DH was born on a dairy farm and a lot of his friends are thus ' dairy farmers'. Surprisingly they get very little for the milk they sell per litre, to the extent that they barely make a living. We cannot buy the stuff direct from the farm either ( not allowed) and this resulted in us ultimately buying it in the supermarket. That sounds great, convenient and all that ....but it resulted in us accumulating a lot of plastic bottles in our box. ( I have 4 boxes in my cupboard, one for glass, tins, paper and plastic). The plastic bottles do not get collected so on top of rinsing them out, separating the tops from the bottle and then driving 5 miles to recycling depot and putting all the bottle manually in the area nominated, I have been thinking for a while that there has to be a better way.
Here in the UK, milk can be delivered daily to your doorstep if you live in a city or built up area. It arrives as by magic as the delivery is made by electric vehicles at about 3 am so households can wake up to cornflakes and fresh milk. In my area, the delivery is every 3 days but I can live with that. The price is higher than in the supermarket but in the end, it will save me plastic bottles, a trip to the recycling plant, transporting the white stuff will be shared and I will have a better conscious. It will also give me some walking to do first thing in the morning, to walk in my slippers down the lane, and see whether the milkman has left me my daily pint. I know soya milk would be better but we have not got completely that far and I am loathe to make changes that the menfolk in this house will react to vividly. I chuckled at the GM Mooseletter from the WI read out to Sainsbury's staff. Maybe we should all question where our milk comes from and what is in it. My boys often ask me why we have butter and not any of the spreads available. My comment is ' I trust cows more than scientists'.

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