Northland Dairy Begs Customers To Return Their Glass Milk Bottles, More Than 1,100 Missing In Last Month

I mean, we all get busy sometimes and forget - right?

While some people might not be familiar with the process, those of a certain age understand how it works when you have the local dairy deliver milk to your door:  The delivery truck brings the milk in glass bottles; once you're finished with the milk and you empty the bottles, you rinse and clean them and place them back outside to be picked up. They're considered "returns" if we're using the industry jargon.

Well, it appears that some customers of a local Northland dairy didn't get that last part of the process down.

Johnson's Riverview Farms is a "small, all natural, grass-based farm in Floodwood", according to their Facebook page. Faced with a growing number of customers who haven't returned their glass milk bottles back to be refilled, they posted a message on their social media page (nicely) asking their customers to return the missing containers.

How many missing glass milk bottles are we talking about? That number is 1,100 in just the last month - and growing.

And while their "ask" is done in a Minnesota-nice way, the situation is serious for the dairy farm. The milk farm business model is built around counting on those returns from customers; the bottles are really the property of the dairy and serve as the vehicle of delivery for the product. Glass bottles aren't cheap for the dairy farm to purchase; they count on being able to reuse them in order to maintain a competitive price for the milk contained inside - the milk that customers purchase.

Essentially all the dairy wants is their bottles back to "keep [prices] as affordable as possible".

While they're less common these days, glass bottles for milk - and pop - were very commonplace not that long ago. How many of you remember the "return" area at your local grocery store - with mountains of glass bottles that were returned by customers?