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62
The Milk Bottle Problem
At most of their meetings the Public Health Committee have to
consider what action should be taken about milk bottles about which
complaints have been received. These complaints are either because of
pieces of glass in the bottles or because the inside surface of the bottle is
dirty. At one period there was a run of complaints of the presence of glass,
very often glass which had broken off from the rims of the bottles. Usually
these are quite large pieces. Some of them can be dangerous because of
the sharp edges ; much more dangerous though are the smaller pieces
which are not readily detected. Very often it would seem that the rim has
been broken after the bottle has been filled and probably occurs when the
bottles are being handled in their crates. The complaints about the
unsatisfactory state of the inner surface of the bottles are almost invariably
the result of some mis-use of the bottle. The scouring and cleansing
processes to which the returned bottles are subjected as a routine are
adequate to ensure the removal of all matter which is there legitimately.
Where these processes fail to ensure the removal of matter present, it is
because the bottles have been grossly mis-used by someone. The arrangements
by which returned bottles are examined before being put through
the washing plant are sufficient to ensure that most of them are excluded.
Some get by; of these probably most are detected by the scrutiny carried
out on the filled bottle. Exceptionally some still get through and of these,
some are reported to the Public Health Department.
As to the size of the problem, the department of course knows only
of those about which complaints have been made. There were twenty of
these in I960. The highest figure in recent years was the thirty-nine in
1959, the lowest the ten in 1952. Even accepting that what are reported are
only a proportion of the failures, these still constitute only a minute
fraction of the bottles circulating in the Borough which are about one
million each week.
Most of the members of the Committee have at different times paid
visits of inspection to the bottling plants of the larger distributors of milk
in the district. Here they have appreciated the extraordinary measures
taken to eliminate any failings. While accepting then that each of these
occurrences which results in an unsatisfactory bottle which becomes the
subject of complaint indicates that something has gone wrong somewhere,
that at some stage someone has failed to detect what he is there to do, it
is impossible to make any suggestions as to how these faults can be
eliminated. It is probable that because complete success depends on the
human, failures can never be wholly eliminated, and that as long as the
glass bottle is used as the container of milk, so long will there be these
occurrences.
One alternative to the glass bottle is the carton. Even well before the
last war this was being considered, but there was no large scale development.
More recently however, it seems that the proposal is becoming
popular again. One disadvantage of course, is the added cost. As a means of
popularising the carton and as a means too of avoiding the soiling of