A love of good quality milk and a hate of plastic has inspired a recent change at the Saint Clair Family Estate winery.
No longer are staff making their morning coffee with milk poured from a plastic container. Instead, they’re hearing the clink of glass as they open the fridge to find glass-bottled milk from the top of the south company, Milk and More.
Freshly delivered to the office twice a week, the change to glass bottled milk means there will be 500 less plastic milk bottles going through recycling per year and 500 less plastic tops passing through the waste system. Not only this but during harvest 2000 two litre plastic milk bottles will be replaced with refillable and recyclable 20-litre jerry cans.
All glass bottles are reusable and collected weekly by Milk and More to be refilled for future deliveries.
Recently elected leader of the Green Team at Saint Clair and Cellar Hand, Jefferson Simmons says the new milk is just another positive change in a wider initiative within the company to reduce its impact on the environment.
From composting all food scraps to removing bins from the winery, recycling all soft plastics to electric powered forklifts; The Saint Clair winery is on a mission to ensure that their environmental footprint is as light as possible through all of its day to day practises.
“Many people are working together for the good of the environment to minimise our global impact and will continue to do so, all staff are encouraged to put forward ideas and many are already in action,” Jefferson says.
And it’s not only the environment that is feeling the benefits of this change, Jefferson says the milk tastes better too, proving so popular with staff it’s even converting non-dairy drinkers.
“The milk is so creamy and rich and being the first to open the new bottle of milk has become somewhat of a luxury amongst the team due to the thick cap of lactose-based bliss that forms at the top of the bottle,” he says.
