I just moved back to Canada from the UK. In the UK we got our milk from a local dairy in glass bottles with a wee foil tab on the mouth. Occasionally the magpies would get to it before we did, and we had a couple bottles go bad in a heat wave, but generally it worked great. Now I’m back to buying bags of milk within bags, and the amount of waste is shocking. Can’t recycle it where I am.
While milk bags are not as environmentally friendly as glass, glass is very heavy and expensive to transport and requires a fair bit of energy to wash and sterilize for reuse.
Compared to cardboard cartons (which are lined with plastic to make it waterproof) and plastic jugs, milk bags are more environmentally friendly even if you put the bags in a landfill and recycle or reuse the cartons and/or jugs.
That said, even if milk bags are not recycled, you can reuse them. Many Canadians cut one of the short ends and rinse them out to make a freezer bag or a lunch bag which can be reused multiple times. Some people use them to hold nails or screws.
