Occasionally, out of 1000+ deliveries some of the half gallon resuable bottles that are received are leaking.
To put this in perspective – when we deliver 2500 bottles a week and each can be reused an average of 100 times – in theory approximately 25 of those bottles would be leakers since there is not way to discernably tell when a bottle is nearing the end of its life cycle and often the leaks are either from hairline cracks or tiny holes (sometimes the pressure from the leakers makes it so it is undetectable until the seal broken as well due to the pressure of the milk inside the bottle).
Out of the mentioned 25 bottles – we do catch about 15 of them between filling and delivery – but some are not evident until they are opened. Despite our best efforts there is no way to catch every leaky bottle every time.
The plastic we use also does tend to wear out faster since we have made the decision not to use BPA in our bottles – an industry first in the returnable dairy plastic bottle containers.
BPA would add additional rigidity to the bottle but there is some evidence that BPA is not a safe additive to food grade containers.
Here is an article from the Mayo Clinic regarding the subject on BPA: “What is BPA, and what are the concerns about BPA?”
We do ask that we are informed of any leaking containers to ensure credit is given for the bottle (and if the milk or juice is unusable credit for that as well). When a milk bottle leaks it is still safe to drink the liquid within if it is transferred to another container.
Please do not return leaking containers to us; instead place the bottles with your regular home recycling so they can be removed from our circulation – if not someone else would eventually receive the leaking container. Also, please e-mail us at service@wasatchmilk.com to receive a credit for the leaky container and/or the product inside.
