This is a big financial commitment for us, but it’s an exciting project and we’re giving it our best shot! But the problem is what happens to the straws after they’ve been used – their strength becomes a weakness, as they take centuries to degrade. It’s naturally sweetened with Stevia leaf extract and contains naturally occurring sugars (from the low-fat milk). We were delighted that Cool Milk were able to arrange for our milk to be delivered in glass pints, and the children and teachers have adapted very quickly to the new way of doing things – we’re really pleased we made the change.

Straws – Cool Milk

A mid-morning portion of school milk provides an amazing array of natural nutrients, and it gives children an energy and hydration boost when they need it most. Parents are accustomed to giving their children water bottles to take to school, so why not extend this to a milk bottle? They’ve already had some great ideas and formal laboratory work has commenced – all top secret for now, but watch this space.At Lincoln Carlton Academy, we are proud to have trialled the use of reusable milk bottles,” enthused Mrs Malam, Headteacher. We’re running a trial with a handful of local schools to see how this would work in practice – we hope to publish the results of the trial soon.

Viva Milk - Milk matters!

Our children have done a lot of work on the issue of plastic pollution and we decided that we should try to cut out all single-use plastic wherever possible”, reported head teacher James Law. The taste of all three New VIVA Milk Drinks was preferred against another leading brand of no added sugar Milk Drink. Biodegradable plastic straws are available but the jury’s out – they’re not as easy to recycle as other plastics, and they only break down in certain conditions so if they get in the rivers and oceans, they ‘re just as harmful as “normal” plastic.We need to supply milk in hygienic, convenient packaging so that the milk drinking experience is good for the kids, and good for their teachers and carers. So some schools have already changed the way they serve the milk and we now supply them with 2-litre poly bottles or, for those with a complete aversion to plastic, 1-pint glass bottles. Reusable straws certainly exist – bamboo, silicon, stainless steel, even glass – but they need to be carefully washed and they could turn into lethal weapons in the wrong hands!

Plastic Milk Bottles With Straws - Etsy

Reduce, reuse, recycle – maybe the middle one of the three is not quite right in a school environment? So we’re looking at the problem from a fresh perspective – we’re trying to develop a straw using alternative natural materials, that will be cheap and easy to manufacture, and will degrade quickly and harmlessly in water or soil. The plastic straw is used by millions of children across the UK to consume their individual servings of milk. New VIVA Flavoured Milk Drinks taste so delicious we want everyone to be able to enjoy them wherever they are; at school, on-the-go and at home. But there are several problems – paper straws can disintegrate quite quickly when immersed in liquids, they’re much more expensive than plastic straws, and there is insufficient production capacity to meet potential demand.Or you could try bucatini – it’s a bit like spaghetti but with a hole down the middle; the only problem is that the tube is very narrow so it might take a while to guzzle your full portion. One of the children told me that she loves her bottle as it’s got her name on it, and she loves how milk makes her bones healthy. We add Vitamin D to VIVA Milk Drinks so that your body can easily absorb the calcium, helping you develop strong, healthy bones! If you give this pick-nick and lunchbox friendly drink to a kid they’ll get vitamins (D, riboflavin, B12), and minerals (calcium, iodine) together with 1. Secondly, they aren’t so durable, either in transit or in use – paper has a habit of disintegrating when wet!

Environmental Improvement Plan – Cool Milk Environmental Improvement Plan – Cool Milk

One size does not fit all – what works for a small single-room nursery may be wholly inappropriate for a large multi-class school. When the counting and analyzing are done, an impartial verifier professional double-checks the calculations. Replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats in your daily diet contributes to maintaining a recommended cholesterol level. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more confusing, some plastics are compostable – that means they biodegrade and disintegrate without leaving toxic residue, but they need the correct composting conditions.Milldown CofE Academy wanted to completely eliminate packaging waste so they now receive their milk in glass pint bottles. We don’t put the acidity regulator used for most of our other drinks in this one because we figured it won’t be used for coffee that much, so it’s not needed. But there are a few stdrawbacks; they are expensive to produce in a sanitary manner, gluten-intolerants may not like them too much, and our tests have shown that they’re very easy to split – an over-enthusiastic squeeze results in liquid coming out of the sides of the straw, not just the end!