Milkmen Coming Back To London As Millennials Eschew The Plastic Bottle In Favor Of Glass

All over the world, teenagers have been skipping school to protest to their governments over climate change and adopting more environmentally friendly policies. Millennials have started taking more steps to be environmentally friendly in their own lives, opting not to make use of things like disposable plastic bags when shopping or plastic straws.

One of their new habits seems to be bringing back an old tradition that most would have heard about from their parents. London millennials have decided they no longer want plastic milk bottles in their home. Instead, they have decided to start calling on the milkman to deliver milk to their doors, the Evening Standard is reporting.

According to the report, in the past three month, more than 2,500 new customers have signed up for milk delivery in the English capital as more and more people make efforts to cut their usage of plastic around the city. Estimates show that there has been a 25 percent increase in interest in glass bottles for milk delivery in the past two years alone.

“With just a minimal amount of effort, you can make quite a difference,” Ian Beardwell, one milkman whose business has been steadily growing, says of all his new customers signing up to his service.

Milkmen return to London as millennials bid to cut plastic waste https://t.co/kHYgoGsxJo

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According to Beardwell, he alone collects and delivers more than 4,000 glass bottles per week. Considering he can’t be the only milkman operating in the city, that’s a lot of plastic that isn’t being thrown into the trash over the course of a year.

As BBC reports, Beardwell has been working in the industry for almost three decades already, and in recent years has been experiencing an unexpected rise in customers as more people realize the convenience of plastic bottles is not worth the damage to the environment. He learned the trade from his father and his uncle.

One company explained that it was the release of David Attenborough’s latest documentary that seemed to spark a 50 percent increase in interest on their website alone. Aside from the sudden interest in their services, the jump in existing customers who wanted glass over plastic jumped from 50 percent to 90 percent.

The push to remove plastic from our everyday lives across the world comes after thousands of photos have been doing the rounds about plastic pollution across popular beaches, in waterways, and even inside the stomachs of dead birds and sea creatures. Young people in particular have realized that an immediate change to our lifestyles is the only thing that could save the planet for the future.