Support pours in for dairy’s crowdfunding idea

SCHULZ Organic Dairy has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to purchase the equipment required to package more of their milk in glass.

The project by the Timboon dairy, launched on Thursday last week, has the potential to take about 20 tonnes of single-use plastic waste out of the system each year.

It has already raised more than $25,000 as of Tuesday.

After a trial phase at farmers’ markets, where Schulz’s 400 hand-filled, hand-labelled 1 litre glass bottles of organic milk remain a weekly sell-out, it is time to scale the initiative into retail.

This requires greater automation, and the crowdfunding campaign aims to raise enough capital to purchase the infrastructure required.

“With the equivalent of around two billion 1L plastic bottles of milk used and discarded in Australia each year, it’s an issue that needs some urgent attention,” Simon Schulz said.

“We no longer want to contribute to this mess. We need to find a better way. My hope is that this initiative can pave the way for other milk producers to follow suit.”

If Schulz Organic Dairy successfully reaches its initial campaign target of $48,000, the business can increase the proportion of its product in glass to 3,000 litres a week.

An over-achieving result that triples the target would result in 10,000 litres a week – putting the dairy on track to a bold master plan of eliminating plastic bottle use altogether.

At this scale, Schulz would move from supplying the “true believers” at farmers’ markets to offering milk in refillable glass bottles to more consumers via mainstream outlets.

Rather than simply changing from singleuse plastic to single-use glass, both destined for recycling (that may or may not happen) or landfill (increasingly likely), the glass bottles will be returnable and refillable, with an estimated re-usage rate of at least eight times per bottle.

The team at Schulz Organic Dairy have been very encouraged by the response from milk retailers so far. These retailers are keen to sell the milk in glass and happy to facilitate the scheme – they will act as collection points for the returning bottles and will be asked to handle the $2 refundable deposit paid by consumers per bottle.

For more information, head to schulzorganicdairy.com.au.