Are bottles used for milk. They may be reusable glass bottles used mainly for doorstep delivery of fresh milk by milkmen. Customers are expected to rinse the empty bottles and leave on the doorstep for collection. The standard size of a bottle varies with location; common sizes are 1 pint or 1 quart, although cream may be delivered in smaller bottles.
More recently, plastic bottles have been commonly used for milk. These are often made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), are used only once, and are easily recycleable.
Before milk bottles, milkmen filled the customers’ jugs. For many collectors, milk bottles carry a nostalgic quality of a bygone age. The most prized milk bottles are embosed or pyroglazed (painted) with names of dairies on them, which were used for home delivery of milk so that the milk bottles could find their way back to their respective dairies.
It is not clear when the first milk bottles came into use. However, the New York Dairy Company is credited with having the first factory that produced milk bottles, and one of the first patents for a milk container was held by the Lester Milk Jar. There are many other similar milk containers from around this period, including the Mackworh Pure Jersey Cream crockery type jar, the Manorfield Stock Farm, the Manor, the Pa glass wide mouth jar, and the Tuthill’s Dairy Unionville, NY.
Lewis P. Whiteman holds the first patent for a glass milk bottle with a small glass lid and a tin clip. The next earliest patent is for a milk bottle with a dome type tin cap and was granted September 23, 1884 to Whitemen’s brother, Abram V. Whiteman. This bottle has been found with cream line marks and is very valuable. The Whiteman brothers produced milk bottles based on these specifications at the Warren Glass Works Company in Cumberland, Maryland and sold them through their New York sales office.
The Original Thatcher is one of the most desirable milk bottles for collectors. The patent for the glass dome lid is dated April 27, 1886. There are several variations of this early milk bottle and many reproductions. During this time period, many types of bottles were being used to hold and distribute milk. These include a pop bottle type with a wire clamp, used by the Chicago Sterilized Milk Company, Sweet Clover, and others. Fruit jars were also used, but only the Cohansey Glass Manufacturing plant made them with dairy names embossed on them.
The Commonsense Milk Bottle with the first cap seat was developed as an economical means for sealing a reusable milk bottle by the Thatcher Manufacturing Company around 1900. Most bottles produced after this time have a cap seat.
By the 1920s, glass milk bottles had become the norm in the UK after slowly being introduced from the US before World War I.
Milk bottles before the 1930s were round. In 1935, slender-neck bottles were introduced in the UK. In the 1940s, a square squat bottle became the more popular style. Milk bottles since the 1930s have used pyroglaze or ACL (Applied Color Label) to identify the bottles. Before the 1930s, names were embossed on milk bottles using a slug plate. The name was impressed on the slug plate, then the plate was inserted into the mold used to make the bottle – the result was the embossed name on the bottle. In 1980 a new bottle, nicknamed “dumpy,” was introduced in the UK where it remains the standard now.
From the 1960s onward in the United States, with improvements in shipping and storage materials, glass bottles have almost completely been replaced with either LDPE coated paper cartons or recyclable HDPE plastic containers (such as square milk jugs), depending on the brand. These paper and plastic containers are lighter, cheaper and safer to both manufacture and ship to consumers.
In 1975, 94% of milk in the UK was in glass bottles, but as of 2012 this number was down to 4%.
However, there are growing concerns among some Americans as to the quality and safety of industrialized milk, and the local, non-homogenized milk industry has seen a popular resurgence in certain markets in the US in the last decade or so. Because of this, the use of glass bottles in local or regional, non-industrial milk distribution has become an increasingly common sight.
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