Poll for my son's science project

[Shannon in TN]

My son is doing a project that involves recycling milk jugs.  Could you please take a minute and fill out the poll?  Please feel free to add any comments to the thread if there's more to your answer.

 

Thanks!
 

[PinkTulip]

We drink a ton of milk - 4 teenage boys - about 8 gallons a week. We recycle, thanks to our city that offers a recycling only garbage can. Good luck to him!

[SproutMamaK]

We drink a lot of milk, I'd say probably 3 gallons a week. However, I had to choose the "other" option in your poll because we don't have gallon jugs up here, we have milk bags. Those get recycled.

[Daria]

I voted 0 - 50 but I have a couple questions about the poll.

 

1) What about those of who buy milk (to bake with or put on our cereal) but don't actually drink milk?  Which are you really asking about?

 

2) What about people who buy milk, but not in plastic jugs.  I am a plastic jug buyer, but don't often buy the gallon size.

 

For me, it didn't make a difference, since any of the wordings -- how much do you drink? how much do you buy? how many of those are in plastic gallon jugs? would lead to an answer of 0 - 59.

[Ethel Mertz]

I voted that we drink up to 50 gallons a year. However, our milk doesn't come in plastic jugs. It comes in cardboard cartons that we then collapse and throw away as we can't recycle those. Also, our town has a "transfer station" rather than garbage pickup. Each resident takes her/his trash and recycling to the transfer station. 

[Junie]

We drink about 200-250 gallons of milk each year.

 

We recycle.

 

I voted "no" about the trash pick-up, but the real answer is that I don't know because we take our trash to the landfill ourselves.  I don't think that the neighbors have a separate receptacle for recycling, but I don't really pay much attention to their trash.  ;)

[Loowit]

We drink 4 to 5 gallons of milk each week and recycle the containers.  We do not have curbside pickup of recycle because we are outside of city limits, but there is a recycle station a few blocks from us were we can drop it off.

[FriedClams]

We drink almond milk, mostly. We usually get half gallon cartons, and recycle. I didn't answer for that.

 

I answered for our regular milk (kid milk) - gallon a week, recycled.

[MEmama]

Our consumption is split between almond milk (me and DH) and organic cow milk (DS and occasional cooking needs). I'd guess well under 50 gallons per year. We also purchase a combination of cardboard cartons and glass bottles, never plastic jugs. The cardboard is recycled and the glass is returnable and reused. We have curbside for the recycling. The returnables go back to the store.

[EKS]

I don't buy milk in plastic jugs.  So I don't recycle them.

[Carrie12345]

Our trash service does offer recycling pick up, but my development carries the contract that includes recycling, so I don't technically make the choice to have it. (Though I'd recycle either way.)

[creekland]

< 50 gallons here even when the boys were home.  But every plastic container in our house that can be recycled is recycled even though we have to drive about 15 minutes to the place where they get recycled.  Once we get a large enough amount, hubby takes them along with him as he's headed to a job site in that direction and drops them off, thus saving gas too.

 

I can't ever bring myself to trash things that can be recycled.  We'll bring plastic along with us for miles on trips if I don't see a place to recycle them.  I know we can back home (and I know the recycling place actually recycles them - they don't just trash it).

[MEmama]

I can't ever bring myself to trash things that can be recycled. We'll bring plastic along with us for miles on trips if I don't see a place to recycle them. I know we can back home (and I know the recycling place actually recycles them - they don't just trash it).

Lol. We used to take huge bags of empty glass containers across the border because there was zero glass recycling in the province where we lived. We were always so nervous that border control would ask us about it, but we just couldn't bear to throw away glass.

[Butter]

1) What about those of who buy milk (to bake with or put on our cereal) but don't actually drink milk?  Which are you really asking about?

 

I assumed and answered based on how much we buy.  We don't actually drink any milk.  All milk we buy is for cooking and cereal.

[4ofus]

My family buys 52 gallons/year. That's one/week. We buy from a cow share & we use glass jars so I put "other" for the empty jars. 

[Tita Gidge]

We might consume about 1 gallon of milk a year.  We buy in small cartons throughout the year when we have visitors (who want milk with their tea or coffee). 

 

I do re-use the cartons to hold things - weeds the kids pick, pencils, rocks (for use as book ends in our school room!)

 

We have once-weekly recycle pick-up.  I think we put out our little recycle bin maybe once 6-8 weeks, if that. We don't buy a lot of stuff with recyclable packaging; most of what we buy is re-used or re-purposed for our own, immediate use. Because I'm Asian, and that's how we roll LOL.

[Farrar]

We drink very little. I chose that we recycle the jugs... but that's only true when they're plastic. Probably half the time I buy milk in a half gallon that's paper like an OJ container. Those we can't recycle here.

[Cinder]

We consume just under a gallon a week if you count regular milk as well as half-and-half. The milk comes in 1/2 gal plastic jugs; half-and-half comes in 1/2 gal boxes or 1 qt plastic bottles. No recycling service here so it all goes in the trash.

[Guest]

Done.

 

[mom2scouts]

I said no to the third question, but our county offers a weekly pickup service that is not related to our trash service.

[Sherry in OH]

We have recycling but only type 1 plastic bottles are accepted.  Milk jugs are type 2 so they go in the trash.  We use about 3/4 of a gallon per week.

[Amira]

We drink a lot of milk, I'd say probably 3 gallons a week. However, I had to choose the "other" option in your poll because we don't have gallon jugs up here, we have milk bags. Those get recycled.

 

I wish they sold bagged milk in the US.

[lewber]

We don't drink a lot of milk so we only buy the paper half cartons. We recycle those.

[73349]

My city's recycling accepts both plastic jugs and gable-top cartons now.

 

We do have the option of glass bottles with a deposit that go back to the store, but I don't usually choose to pay the increased cost.

 

0 to 50 gallons is a big range for the survey. We're probably at 45 to 50 gallons.

[Bluegoat]

Our milk comes in liters, and we drink about 12 per week, which I think is about 3 gallons.  We recycle jugs or cardboard cartons if we have them, and that is picked up at the curb.  (And if we put them in the garbage, they won't take it at all.)  If we get glass bottles, we turn them in when we get new ones, or we get our deposit back if we don't want any more milk.

[foxbridgeacademy]

We drink 2-3 gallons a week at most so I chose 101-125. We throw them away because while my town says it offers recycling the practice of using their service is impractical, we tried for months to make it work.  I would LOVE to live someplace that had a organized system for recycling. 

[Southern Ivy]

We only buy 1/2 gallon at a time, in the paper carton. One 1/2 gallon lasts us anywhere from 1-2 weeks. (Only dd drinks it and she's hit and miss with her intake. Depends on her mood.)
I wish our town offered recycling. I'd do it in a heartbeat. 

[thessa516]

I chose other for the recycling question because our milk comes in glass jars that go back to the dairy. So not recycled, but re-used. 

[abba12]

Make sure he knows his statistics from this poll may be slightly skewed, as the average number of children per woman on this board is likely higher than general society, with quite a few families who have 4+ skewing the results

 

With my 3 little ones, I generally buy 2-3 gallons per week. We usually throw it in the recycle bin

[whitestavern]

We purchase raw milk in glass bottles so I return them to the store for my refund. But if I were to purchase plastic jugs of milk, I would recycle them. And our town does have trash pick up as well as recycling pick up.

[wathe]

Other.  Milk here comes in bags.  I haven't seen jug milk in sotres for decades.

[Aiden]

We also don't use plastic jugs, as they aren't available here. I wish they were. Instead I buy milk by the liter in plastic bottles and run out constantly just because I can't carry enough at one time to last more than a day or two. We do have recycling pickup, but to be honest, I have no idea what can and cannot be recycled here (no idea what facilities they have). I know I see office buildings with bins for paper, plastic, and aluminum, so I tend to put anything that fits in those categories in the recycling bag and let them sort it out.

[Amy in NH]

We go through a gallon a day, on average. We either recycle the plastic jugs which requires someone to take them to the transfer center, or we take the glass bottles back to the farm store where they are reused.

[chocolatechip]

I voted based on what we are currently doing: buying milk at the store and recycling the jugs with our regular garbage service (free recycling pick up). 

 

However, until very recently we were getting raw milk from a farm in glass jars that we would wash. The only reason we are not currently doing this is because of the cost. 

[Melissa in Australia]

couldn't vote

 we have a house cow and I milk it. we use plastic reusable jugs that we have used for years and years.

 I typically get 6 litres of milk per milking we do not drink all of it  as there is that much fresh milk again the following day.I have no idea how many gallons as that is a unit of measurement I am not familiar with.

[Nan in Mass]

We have no trash pickup at all. The townspeople take stuff, both recyclables and trash and swopshop stuff, to the transfer station ourselves.

 

Nan