Glass campaign half-full

When I was a little kid one of my jobs after school was to put four empty milk bottles in the wire carrier and take them out to the letterbox for the milkman to swap over for full ones.

Around dinner time the teenage milkboys in their Dunlop volleys and leather aprons forever running bottles back and forward from the milkman’s truck swept up our road in an effortless choreography that we ranked up there with our weekly rubbish collectors and the Harlem Globetrotters.

Milkboys were neighbourhood heroes. It was rumoured a milkboy earned as much as $15 a week, even more with Christmas tips!  To me and my friends being chosen to perform this coveted role was an unattainable dream.

To my small boy’s sensibility putting out milk bottles each night was a daily chore that seemed as set as the sun going down, a ritual that would surely continue on and on forever..

I can’t remember exactly when home milk deliveries stopped and glass bottles disappeared. It would have been sometime in the eighties; the cold winds of economic rationalism blowing the milkman and his boys to the curb, leaving milk at the mercy of the supermarket duopoly.  Glass bottles suffered the same fate; superseded by cheap, convenient plastic and waxed cardboard.

But thirty years later and we’ve come full circle; milk and other groceries are home delivered again and reusable glass bottles are making a comeback.

Simon Schulz from Schulz Organic Dairy produces biodynamic milk in the most sustainable way he knows how and then puts it in a plastic bottle.  Seeing the contradiction between product and packaging Simon is on a mission to bring back glass.

After trialling a few hundred glass bottles at their farmers’ market stall and travelling to the States to see other dairies using glass bottles Simon is committing to replace all the plastic bottles they generate each year with reusable glass.

The numbers go something like this Simon says, “$48,000 will buy equipment to produce 3,000 bottles a week and save 6 tonnes of plastic waste per year. $150,000 and we could bottle 10,000 a week, reducing our plastic use by 20 tonnes per year!  And for $500,000, we could convert our entire milk production over and save 60 tonnes of plastic per year.”

The Pozible campaign to make this all a reality is happening right now and they’re already almost half way to their first target!  CERES Fair Food is so excited to be a founding retailer for Schulz glass bottles and cannot wait to help make this a reality for households across Melbourne.

Follow this link for all the action and how to donate and make milk in returnable glass bottles on your doorstep (or Food Host’s doorstep) an actual thing again.

A feast in time

Organic pioneers Tim and Deri Anne run Angelica Organic Farm. Their small property in Glenlyon supplies Melbourne restaurants and homes with seasonal vegetables and culinary herbs, garlic and heirloom tomatoes.

This season saw the farm hit with a perfect storm; a delayed lease put off plantings, multiple irrigation failures over summer cost them 50% of their award winning garlic crop and recent consecutive heavy frosts have depleted follow-up crops.

After doing their sums Tim and Deri are facing having to walk off their land. Word of their plight, however, has got out and a selection of some of Melbourne’s best chefs and food producers are banding together to put on a unique lunch on Sunday 19th August.

Hosted by Jerry Mai at Annam, lunch will consist of five family style courses: Adam Racina (Pinotta), Nicky Reimer (Bellota), Ben McMenamin (The Social Food Project) and Sascha Rust (Copper Pot Seddon).

And as well as veg from Tim and Deri’s farm, produce has been donated from Warialda Belted Galloway Beef, pork from Bundarra Berkshires and Jonai Farms and seafood from Hiramasa Kingfish suppliers.

Tickets $65 per person, includes five courses with beverages.

Bookings via Annam (03 9654 6627 / info@annam.com.au)

Have a great week

Chris