Story One - Rinse and Return

This pint milk bottle is one of many in our collection, it came from Stroud Creamery which was based on Slad Road in Stroud until 1994. The milk most people used to have delivered on their doorsteps came from one of many local dairies and thus would have had very few food miles. We have examples of bottles from Severn Valley Dairy at Stonehouse, Park Farm at Paganhill and a variety of local dairies including Cainscross, Chalford, Minchinhampton, Dursley, Wotton-under-Edge and Sharpness.

Milk came packaged in a glass bottle that could be returned and re-used many times. It wasn’t only milk being sold in returnable glass bottles, but mineral water and soft drinks from companies such as Stroud Brewery and Bown & Co. It was common practice up until the 1980s to return a glass bottle to the shop in return for a small cash refund.

Today, milk delivered in glass is on the rise again as consumers consider the environmental benefits over single-use plastic. Beyond the energy savings of reusing a glass bottle, at the end of its life, recycling glass produces less C02 emissions than the new plastic most modern milk bottles are made of. Plus, glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly without loss of quality, while recycled plastic tends to be downgraded into lesser items. In 2018 it was calculated that only 9% of all plastic ever made has been recycled.