{"id":133,"date":"2008-06-30T00:27:59","date_gmt":"2008-06-30T04:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/?p=133"},"modified":"2008-07-01T21:05:46","modified_gmt":"2008-07-02T01:05:46","slug":"efficiency-one-gallon-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/?p=133","title":{"rendered":"Efficiency One Gallon at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/06\/30\/business\/30milk.html?ei=5087&em=&en=5f5a4defc21ec64e&ex=1214971200&pagewanted=print<\/a><\/p>\n

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By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM<\/a><\/div>\n

NORTH CANTON, Ohio \u2014 A simple change to the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by Wal-Mart<\/a> and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s not to like? Plenty, as it turns out.<\/p>\n

The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate it,\u201d said Lisa DeHoff, a cafe owner shopping in a Sam\u2019s Club here.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt spills everywhere,\u201d said Amy Wise, a homemaker.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very hard for kids to pour,\u201d said Lee Morris, who was shopping for her grandchildren.<\/p>\n

But retailers are undeterred by the prospect of upended bowls of Cheerios. The new jugs have many advantages from their point of view, and Sam\u2019s Club intends to roll them out broadly, making them more prevalent.<\/p>\n

The redesign of the gallon milk jug, experts say, is an example of the changes likely to play out in the American economy over the next two decades. In an era of soaring global demand and higher costs for energy and materials, virtually every aspect of the economy needs to be re-examined, they say, and many products must be redesigned for greater efficiency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a key strategy as a path forward,\u201d said Anne Johnson, the director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a project of the nonprofit group GreenBlue. \u201cRe-examining, \u2018What are the materials we are using? How are we using them? And where do they go ultimately?\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

Wal-Mart Stores is already moving down this path. But if the milk jug is any indication, some of the changes will take getting used to on the part of consumers. Many spill milk when first using the new jugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we brought in the new milk, we were asking for feedback,\u201d said Heather Mayo, vice president for merchandising at Sam\u2019s Club, a division of Wal-Mart. \u201cAnd they\u2019re saying, \u2018Why\u2019s it in a square jug? Why\u2019s it different? I want the same milk. What happened to my old milk?\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary Tilton tried to educate the public a few days ago as she stood at a Sam\u2019s Club in North Canton, about 50 miles south of Cleveland, luring shoppers with chocolate chip cookies and milk as she showed them how to pour from the new jugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust tilt it slowly and pour slowly,\u201d Ms. Tilton said to passing customers as she talked about the jugs\u2019 environmental benefits and cost savings. Instead of picking up the jug, as most people tend to do, she kept it on a table and gently tipped it toward a cup.<\/p>\n

Mike Compston, who owns a dairy in Yerington, Nev., described the pouring technique in a telephone interview as a \u201crock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demonstrations are but one of several ways Sam\u2019s Club is advocating the containers. Signs in the aisle laud their cost savings and \u201cbetter fridge fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

And some customers have become converts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the new refrigerators with the shelf in the door, these fit nice,\u201d said April Buchanan, who was shopping at the Sam\u2019s Club here. Others, even those who rue the day their tried-and-true jugs were replaced, praised the lower cost, from $2.18 to $2.58 a gallon. Sam\u2019s Club said that was a savings of 10 to 20 cents a gallon compared with old jugs.<\/p>\n

The new jug marks a sharp break with the way dairies and grocers have traditionally produced and stocked milk.<\/p>\n

Early one recent morning, the creators and producers of the new tall rectangular jugs donned goggles and white coats to walk the noisy, chilly production lines at Superior Dairy in Canton, Ohio. It was founded in 1922 by a man who was forced to abandon the brandy business during Prohibition. Five generations of the founder\u2019s family, the Soehnlens, have worked there.<\/p>\n

Today, they bottle and ship two different ways. The old way is inefficient and labor-intensive, according to members of the family. The other day, a worker named Dennis Sickafoose was using a long hook to drag plastic crates loaded with jugs of milk onto a conveyor belt.<\/p>\n

The crates are necessary because the shape of old-fashioned milk jugs prohibits stacking them atop one another. The crates take up a lot of room, they are unwieldy to move, and extra space must be left in delivery trucks to take empty ones back from stores to the dairy.<\/p>\n

They also can be filthy. \u201cBirds roost on them,\u201d said Dan Soehnlen, president of Superior Dairy, which spun off a unit called Creative Edge to design and license new packaging of many kinds. He spoke while standing in pools of the soapy run-off from milk crates that had just been washed. About 100,000 gallons of water a day are used at his dairy clean the crates, Mr. Soehnlen said.<\/p>\n

But with the new jugs, the milk crates are gone. Instead, a machine stacks the jugs, with cardboard sheets between layers. Then the entire pallet, four layers high, is shrink-wrapped and moved with a forklift.<\/p>\n

The company estimates this kind of shipping has cut labor by half and water use by 60 to 70 percent. More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam\u2019s Club coolers, and no empty crates need to be picked up, reducing trips to each Sam\u2019s Club store to two a week, from five \u2014 a big fuel savings. Also, Sam\u2019s Club can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80.<\/p>\n

The whole operation is so much more efficient that milk coming out of a cow in the morning winds up at a Sam\u2019s Club store by that afternoon, compared with several hours later or the next morning by the old method. \u201cThat\u2019s our idea of fresh milk,\u201d Greg Soehnlen, a vice president at Creative Edge, said.<\/p>\n

Sam\u2019s Club started using the boxy jugs in November, and they are now in 189 stores scattered around the country. They will appear soon in more Sam\u2019s Club stores and perhaps in Wal-Marts.<\/p>\n

The question now is whether customers will go along.<\/p>\n

As Ms. Tilton gave her in-store demonstration the other day at the Sam\u2019s Club here, customers stood around her, munching cookies and sipping milk. \u201cWould you like to take some home today?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

A shopper named Jodi Kauffman gave the alien jugs a sidelong glance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cMaybe,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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