Superior Dairy (Canton, Ohio, United States) has developed a stackable plastic milk jug which reduces supply chain costs so much that it is being used by the worlds largest retailers despite consumer complaints.
The milk jug that Sam’s Club (Wal-Mart’s discount arm) and CostCo are using has been flattened to virtually remove the neck and create a stable platform. This has had a series of beneficial consequences:
- There is no longer any need for milk crates and their associated environmental impacts. The crates required a reverse distribution system – meaning that the trucks had to go back with the empty crates rather than a useful load- and also had to be washed with hot water and detergents (~100’000 gallons a day for Superior Dairy alone).
- You can get far more milk on each truck – reducing the number of truck trips by 60%.
- They require much less handling. That means less handling at the dairy, in the trucks, offloading, and stacking in the freezers. And far more milk can be loaded into the fridges: 224 gallons in a fridge that used to hold 80.
- And this means that there are savings that can be shared along the chain from dairy to consumer (or as the industry is fond of saying, “from cow to consumer”).
So how did they leverage the environment? Most of the press you read on this is framed in terms of environmental benefits – giving a green halo to the participating companies, and giving stakeholders a reason to cheer – and support the change.
source: New York Times
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