Schultz Organic Dairy began commercialising the milk in glass initiative at trials in 2017 at Farmers' Markets - selling the glass bottled milk and then accepting returned bottles, to clean, refill and resell them. In the first week they sold out within thirty minutes, and the demand just kept growing.Schulz Organic Dairy then crowd funded on Pozible in 2018 to deliver all their milk in glass. This move not only allowed them to deliver more milk in more returnable glass bottles to more consumers, but also allowed them to mechanise their bottle washing. Incredibly, they are currently hand-labelling and hand-filling all their glass bottles and cleaning the returned ones in a domestic dishwasher. That's a lot of lovin for one bottle of milk.
The overwhelming consumer demand meant that the only way forward is to make modifications to their bottling line to accommodate glass bottles instead of plastic bottles. They also needed to design & make a glass bottle that is can be used over and over. The simple commitment to a glassier product was clearly not so simple and you can see why they needed every bit of help to get it going. In August 2018, Schulz Dairy raised $106,100 against a target of $48,000. People pledged for cow kisses, bottles of milk and one pledge came in for $10,000 for bottle naming rights on Pozible. So much good will for this positive change.
Schulz Organic Dairy is a family business started by Simon Schulz's grandfather and involved in organic farming since 1971. For the past 12 years has been producing organic milk, yogurt, cream and speciality cheeses on the family farm at Timboon.
Schulz has remained a family business and now employs 35 people in production and distribution of its products. Schulz Organic Dairy are not only organic, but very focused on their footprint. They use solar panels for power and collected rainwater in the factory.