The milking system as seen through a glass bottle.

I was listening to a news report dealing with climate change and the effects of plastic bottling of many products, milk being one of the issues. Glass milk bottles have become more in demand result of some people being prepared to pay more for the delivery of bottled milk, this being for them what we all can do to reduce the dumping of plastic. In the same news report, it was pointed out that milk bottles are thicker and heavier than plastic ones, so loading them on trucks would take up more space and for this person to deliver the same amount of milk each day would mean the need of another truck and driver. The costs would be higher and the price was expected to be paid by the consumer. He was hinting that he did not think that this would be welcomed by many others.

Socialists make the point that the driving force in the capitalist system is the need to make a profit. This problem of plastic bottles for milk demonstrates that each business stands on its own to make a profit. When plastic bottles became available for them, hallelujah!,  no longer need to buy glass bottles which don’t last forever, people using them for other things, being smashed etc. No longer having to gather them and wash them. Pluses all around, what people do with them? Who cares, my profits increase and that’s what it’s all about.

I have been making the points around glass bottling: however, the same processes would apply to many other products that are being wrapped in plastic. The best method of solving this and the many other problems the planet Earth is suffering from is to get rid of capitalism, the system at the root of those problems and replace it with common ownership of the means of production.

PH