Our new zero waste milk round with the Proper Good Dairy has been up and running for a few weeks now and it’s been a huge success! In this blog post we take you along with us on our afternoon milk round!
We arrive at the beautiful farm in Acton Scott and the helpful team at the Proper Good Dairy help us to load up their lovely milk. Proper Good Dairy milk is pasteurised, whole, organic milk. It is processed within minutes of leaving the milking parlour and can be at their vending machine on the farm in less than one hour. The milk we collect is still perfectly safe to use (and delicious!) it’s just surplus so we have teamed up to make sure none of it goes to waste.
Jaci from the Proper Good Dairy tells us more about their work and new partnership with Shrewsbury Food Hub:
“We refill our vending machines three times a week to make sure our customers are buying the freshest milk possible. We have to allow a buffer so that they don’t run out, which means we always bring a small amount of milk back to the dairy. This milk is still perfectly fine but has a slightly shorter shelf life. We hate wasting milk so it’s often fed back to calves. At this time of the year we don’t have any calves to feed so we wanted to do something else with the milk. A chance conversation at Shrewsbury Livestock Market put us in touch with Rachel at the Food Hub and she was as keen as we were to make use of the left over milk. Now, each Monday we bottle up all of the milk that has been left over from the weekend, and the brilliant food hub volunteers collect it in their fridge van to distribute to groups who can make use of it. We are really pleased that we can make use of the milk along with helping people at the same time.”
2. With the van loaded we set off to deliver to our partner groups. Ronnie (our wonderful van!) has recently been converted into a refrigerated vehicle so it allows us to safely transport chilled food.
3. We arrive at partner groups to deliver the milk. The groups currently helping us put this milk to good use include Shrewsbury College, various primary schools and the Shrewsbury Ark. All these groups have registered kitchens and they kindly wash out the bottles they received the previous week so we can return them to the Proper Good Dairy to be reused. Smiles all round!
We’ve had wonderful feedback from our partner groups who have used the milk and we’re delighted to be working with a wonderful local business.
“The kids absolutely love the Proper Good milk – I’ve never seen them drink so much!”
Rod from TMBSS Harlescott
