Confusion over how people should dispose of glass milk bottles under coronavirus restrictions has created trouble for Upper Valley dairy farmers who rely on bottle returns to continue delivering milk to local stores and farm stands.
Last week, Strafford Organic Creamery saw its supply of glass bottles dwindling and put out a call to the community for help.
“So our return rate is still low and if we don’t get twice as many bottles back in the next few days, we’re going to have to dump milk next week,” the company wrote on Facebook. “Please, please find a way to return your bottles, today if you can.”
Amy Huyffer, who co-owns the 600-acre Rockbottom Farm where the creamery is located, chalked up a decrease in bottle returns to a combination of Vermont’s COVID-19 restrictions and misinformation.
Vermont halted enforcement of its bottle bill, possibly leading some stores and customers to believe that glass milk bottles — not just aluminum and plastic bottles — shouldn’t be returned. But every store that sells Strafford milk is accepting the creamery’s bottles back, she said.
“We don’t have a month extra supply or two months or however long this is going to last. We don’t even really have an extra week,” Huyffer said on Tuesday. “We need that flow to happen.”
Luckily, Huyffer said, her call to action on social media resulted in the dairy farm seeing its stock replenished. But Strafford isn’t the only business that’s struggled to get bottles back.
McNamara Dairy in Plainfield is seeing a “huge pinch on bottles,” Liz McNamara said in a phone interview.
“We are having trouble getting bottles back and are having to use up our stock of bottles that we have,” she said.
Unlike the 5-cent deposit on soda bottles and cans, the glass milk bottles carry a much heftier deposit to encourage recycling — $1 for McNamara bottles and $1.50 for Strafford Organic bottles.
McNamara said people are worried about personal protection and making sure they return home with needed items, and not necessarily returning bottles during trips to the grocery store. The dairy farm has alternatives it can turn to, she said, and already switched to plastic bottles for milk being sold at Hannaford supermarkets.
Still, she’s asking people to return glass bottles to the Plainfield farm store, if they can’t do so at the supermarket.
Both Hannaford and the Co-op Food Stores, which carry McNamara milk, say they continue to accept glass bottles from local dairy farms, although their procedures have changed.
“Once the customer shows the bottle(s) to the cashiers and receives credit, the customer simply places the bottle(s) in the return crates for pickup by the local dairies,” Co-op spokesman Allan Reetz said in an email Wednesday. “The only thing that is different from before is that the customer handles their bottles from the time they bring it in the store until the time it goes in the return crate.”
Hannaford temporarily discontinued bottle returns on March 25 out of concerns for employee safety. However, the returns were brought back April 2, so long as customers wash glass milk bottles with soap before bringing them back, according to spokesman Eric Blom.
Confusion over the bottles comes as school and restaurant closures have created a surplus of milk that’s driving prices to historic lows.
The dairy co-op Agri-Mark predicts the price of milk per hundred pounds could reach $12.03 in June, down $6.25 from the same time last year.
Agri-Mark, which owns Cabot Creamery, collects milk from farmers through the Northeast and sells it to large producers.
The forecast is “devastating news” for dairy farmers already struggling to make ends meet, said New Hampshire Agriculture Commissioner Shawn Jasper.
“On its own, if nothing intervenes, I think it’s a death knell for anybody in New Hampshire who is selling milk to a cooperative,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Jasper is among seven state agriculture commissioners who wrote to the federal government earlier this month urging payouts to farmers and price controls. New Hampshire and Maine’s congressional delegation followed up with their own letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue last week.
“With the onset of COVID-19 globally, the light has dimmed and may go out for many of our dairy farm families,” the agriculture officials wrote.
However, it’s not yet clear those actions will be enough to save farms.
“This hit could be fatal if there is not support from the feds,” Jasper said.
McNamara Dairy, which has its own processing facility, is shielded from some of the economic fallout because of its independence, McNamara said. Processing and bottling is done in Plainfield before milk is then sent to stores and, during normal times, restaurants and schools.
Business has shifted so that as more people stay home, residential milk sales are beginning to make up for the loss of restaurants and schools, McNamara added.
“We are fortunately in a much better situation than most dairy farmers around here right now,” McNamara said, adding that she’s heard of farms being instructed to dump milk.
Meanwhile, Strafford Creamery has seen its business grow because of an increasing interest in buying local. It also is helped by Farmers to You, a company that takes produce and milk to curbside delivery customers in Boston.
“Interest in local foods and shoring up a local food system is definitely on the rise,” Huyffer said.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.