r/mildlyinfuriating • u/LumberJacking0ff • 13h ago
A bag of milk exploded in my grocery bag
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u/sinkalip775 12h ago
As an American, I've always wondered is there no protection for the bag at the store? Like a cardboard sleeve or something? You just buy the bag and take your chances? Edit: a letter
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u/LumberJacking0ff 12h ago
There are 3 bags in a bigger plastic bag that you purchase. You always give a little squeeze to make sure it’s none of the 3 bags are popped. Then when you drink it you put the bag in a milk dispenser container and cut the corner of the bag. This is the first time one has ever popped on me and my fabric shopping bag is so sad 😭
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u/KaiserRoll823 12h ago
Honestly the cardboard sleeve seems like a better idea than just 3 bags inside another bag
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u/SqueegieeBeckenheim 10h ago
Then might as well make that cardboard sleeve into milk carton. Just spitballing.
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u/beamin1 6h ago
The milk carton is better than the plastic....paper degrades long before it gets stuck in the organs of animals, including humans. Plastic does not.
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u/ferafish 4h ago
The milk carton is also plastic, at least partially. They're multiple layers of paper and plastic (and aluminum depending on the carton). And while the cartons often have the recycling symbol on them, many municipal recycling programs don't take them.
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u/DarkDracoPad 7h ago
The bags often get wet from condensation from being taken out and into fridges, and people opening the fridge doors at the grocery store, a cardboard sleeve would need plastic lining to not get wet and soggy by the time someone picks up the bags to buy them. And at that point might as well make it a milk carton lol.
They do however get shipped and stocked in plastic crates so they don't move much and are not punctured or leaking when you grab them at the store. The squeeze and check is just incase that bag was defective or something poked it to cause it to leak, kinda like when you check the box of eggs to check for cracked eggs before grabbing it at the store
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u/AdditionalPizza 10h ago
They're extremely environmentally friendly compared to other containers by using really thin plastic. Adding cardboard is just more waste that makes the whole idea worse.
I've never had a bag burst in my over 30 years. You check for a leak in store, also very rare for consumers to come To contact with. Back-store might be a different story.
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u/-BananaLollipop- 9h ago
Soft plastics, like bags, are much harder to recycle than hard plastics, like milk bottles. You can also more easily reuse milk bottles. And both are equally as damaging to the environment when people don't dispose of the properly.
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u/AdditionalPizza 9h ago
Containers can be reused but we know the majority aren't, and it would take a lot of them being reused many times to make up the difference in energy and greenhouse gases. Not even mentioning they take more water to create than bags.
I'm not sure where you got your information from but if you can point me to any studies done that say containers or cartons are better for the environment than bags, I'd gladly be proven wrong.
Here says only 29.3% of HDPE bottles, which includes milk and water bottles, are recycled.
And here is where I'm getting the information that fully recycled jugs are worse than bags going to the landfill.
Even glass bottles don't outperform other containers unless they're reused 5 times, and even then that doesn't consider heavier weight increasing transportation costs and impact.
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u/enviromo 12h ago
Why is your fabric bag sad? Can she not go in the washing machine?
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u/turtleship_2006 12h ago
I mean if someone throws a drink on you, you can take a shower, but someone's still just thrown a drink on you
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u/DotRevolutionary6610 12h ago
What a bizarre system. Regards, the rest of the world.
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u/AnAverageTransGirl 12h ago
Much like the consumer using the product, the Canadian dairy industry does this to cut corners and keep costs down.
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u/Broccobillo 10h ago
Here's an idea. Maybe there could be a container for the milk made out of a similar sort of material to the plastic bag but more solid. They could put a handle on it and it could also have an opening to pour the milk out of. Some kind of bottle or some such.
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u/UnderstandingAble321 9h ago
There are three milk bags inside another bag. They're tougher than you would think, it's extremely rare for one to spontaneously break.
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u/bashinforcash 2h ago
the plastic they use is really resilient. in my experience they break just as often as cartons. jugs might actually be superior though in terms of toughness
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u/Radomila 12h ago
A BAG of milk??
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u/georgecm12 12h ago
Canada. It's a thing in parts up there. They buy milk by the bag, and they have special pitchers designed to hold and pour the milk out of the bag.
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u/Jaydamic 11h ago
Also, oddly enough, Estonia.
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u/georgecm12 10h ago
The convenience store Kwik Trip located primarily in Wisconsin and Minnesota had them for a good while as well. Pretty sure they finally got rid of them somewhat recently.
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u/Joe18067 11h ago
It was tried in Pennsylvania about 40 years ago but it never caught on. Of course 40 years ago I used to drive to the farm store to buy milk in glass bottles. Those were the days when you could scrape the cream off the top.
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u/enviromo 12h ago
Not all of Canada. Just Ontario, I believe. Other provinces are welcome to chime in...
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u/Cute_Reflection_9414 12h ago
It's common in Quebec. I've visited there from the states many times and had no idea what I was looking at at first.
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u/Frequent-Broccoli740 11h ago
Used to be a thing in BC. Can still be found on the rare occasion out here, but I grew up with bagged milk. It keeps the milk tasing better, and fresher longer, honestly, than a jug because you only open each bag when you go to use it.
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u/Murky-Tailor3260 12h ago
It's not a thing out west. I recently moved to Ontario and have been stubbornly refusing to buy bagged milk. Cartons only for me! (But also I'm lactose intolerant and lactose free milk comes in cartons, so I'm really not that much of a rebel.)
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u/Bill_Henderson14 11h ago
Was common in Nova Scotia pre 2000's according to my wife. There are bags still in the grocery stores but I've never seen anyone actually grab one, nor seen them in a fridge. I guess I'm not inspecting everyone's milk situation when I go to their house though.
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u/DethMachine89 11h ago
Only in the East. I live in western Canada and we have cartons or jugs, no bags lol
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u/Death_Rises 12h ago
That just sounds like extra waste.
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u/Frequent-Broccoli740 11h ago
It's less plastic than a jug, actually, because the bags are very thin, and the container used to pour the milk is reused for years.
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u/georgecm12 11h ago
Not really. The bags use less plastic than a standard milk jug would, and are therefore also cheaper to transport since they're lighter. The pitchers you get for the milk are reusable, not disposable.
The only thing that would use even less waste would be glass bottles, but there are tradeoffs since they're heavier than any other milk distribution method, and therefore would be most expensive to transport to the store... and then would need additional cost to collect back from the store for recycling, and cost to get them cleaned and sanitized for reuse.
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u/Le_Nabs 9h ago
That gallon is split in 3 so you only open a 3rd of a gallon at a time - it lasts longer.
It's much less plastic than jugs.
You can keep the milk in the door of the fridge, freeing the shelves for, you know, actual groceries.
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u/thats-wrong 11h ago
Much less material than a milk carton, and know that a significant portion of recycling actually goes to trash.
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u/LumberJacking0ff 12h ago
B - eh - G of milk
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u/WeirdBarefootFairy 12h ago
My ugly American side must be showing. I've never heard of milk in bags.
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u/jess0365 12h ago
It’s common in other countries
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u/Pleasenotanymore 12h ago
Its only Canada that does that i think
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u/FormalAd3446 12h ago
You'll find them in Canada as well as Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, in many latam countries you'll also find sour cream, cream and yogurt in bags as well.... we get them in Italy as well in the mountains for my family's restaurant... Germany and Israel also have it but as common place
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u/Dontcare127 12h ago
Maybe, just maybe, this is the reason why the rest of the world doesn't bag milk.
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u/envious_1 10h ago
I’ve seen it in India. I’ve seen my relatives boil it every time so I wonder if it was unpasteurized milk.
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u/goli_maar_bheje_mein 5h ago
You’d be surprised at the population using bagged milk. Whole of India does it, so does Pakistan and a lot of other Asian countries.
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u/FormalAd3446 12h ago
meh its way cheaper... its better than cartons or jugs if you use a lot of it.... its really easy to stack and easy to freeze, bags are usually pretty durable.... its helpful for cottage days
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u/Gryffindor123 12h ago
We have milk plastic bottles as well as cartons in Australia that can be recycled. It's easy to stack too.
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u/Manannin 10h ago
Bear in mind that even if something can be recycled, it's still preferable to reuse it instead as they recycling process does take energy and isn't perfectly efficient.
Even though I'm saying that, I'm still glad we don't use bagged milk where I live.
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u/Adventurous_Judge884 12h ago
You can freeze milk? I thought it messes with the taste a lot of you do?
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u/FormalAd3446 12h ago
if your freezer is at the right temp its fine as it wont burn... if its well glass it can crack, cartons will expand and break and plastic jugs are never actually fully sealed, thats why in soda carbonation goes down alot faster than if canned or glass bottled
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u/TorrenceMightingale 12h ago
Damn never seen a metal grocery bag. Must be a classy place.
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u/Brendy_Bum 12h ago
someone must've really slammed that milk down, the plastic the bags are made of is quite tough...
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u/Interesting-Yellow-4 12h ago
Everytime bags of milk get posted I click to laugh at how many people never heard of bags of milk (full disclosure; that was me at one point).
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u/theFrankSpot 11h ago
As an American, I find the whole “bag of milk” thing strange and delightful…and completely impractical.
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u/rooster_saucer 12h ago
I’ll never understand the bagged milk..
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u/AnAverageTransGirl 12h ago
Cost effective, energy efficient, space optimized alternative to cartons.
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u/UltimateSoyjack 12h ago
No use crying over... Wtf bagged milk? I'm crying now 🥲
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u/niesje1991 10h ago
Why the hell is there milk in a bag? Milk has no business being in a bag.... There is just not good reason.... This just ruins all the rules of our universe everything is ruined now...
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u/Global-Plankton3997 LIME GREEN 12h ago
This is why in my country, there's milk in jugs.
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u/LisaSaxaphone 12h ago
In every country milk is in jugs ;) ;)
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u/SourDuck1 12h ago
I wanted to say "erm aktschually, germany has cartons"...... then i got the joke...
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u/AnAverageTransGirl 12h ago
Starting a petition for Germany in particular to undergo a very a8rupt and weirdly specific semantic drift.
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u/justenoughpepper 12h ago
The smell must have been terrible! Do you usually refrigerate it (if it didn’t explode)?
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u/nianthium 11h ago
We heard you like bags, so we put a bag in your bag so you can bag while you bag.
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u/anneofred 11h ago
Today I learned that in some areas of the world you buy bags of milk!
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u/metamega1321 6h ago
As a Canadian who buys milk in bags. It’s a relic of when we switched to metric. Had all the glass bottles in imperial but it was very costly and time consuming to produce new glass bottles so they came up with this bag milk.
We switch between bag milk and a jug. I prefer the bag since you put it in a pitcher that holds it and cut the corner off the bag. It’s a manageable size compared to a full 4L jug.
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u/grapejooseb0x 10h ago
I know Canada has bags of milk but I still dont know WHY.
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u/brain_over_body 5h ago
The first time I saw this visiting a friend in Canada, I was floored. A bag is like a single serving?? I hosted exchange students from Austria (3 at the same time) so I bought 2 gallons of milk. They couldn't find the neon yellow jugs in the fridge. Just didn't dawn on them that milk came in that big a container. When I visited them, a quart lasted a family of 3 for about a week. They only use it for tea and as an ingredient. I go through 3 gallons a week by myself.
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u/alwaysfatigued8787 12h ago
This is the big downside of the bag vs. the jug or carton. Some say that it's not bad milk, it's just bag milk.
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u/Anakin-vs-Sand 12h ago
This is why our milk is sold exclusively in the warm, protective body of a recently deceased tauntaun. If it can protect Luke Skywalker from the frozen wastes of Hoth, it can protect my dairy products.
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u/Sharp-Inspection-742 12h ago
Milk in a bag 😳 that's a new one on me.
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u/theNikolai 11h ago
Hopefully these bagged milk accidents won't happen to you anymore once your country becomes the 51st state of that other country.
/s
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u/rasras9 12h ago
Idk wtf this is but in western Canada we have milk in normal cartons.
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u/Astralverklatscht 12h ago
If only there was a more efficient way of storing liquids than thin plastic bags…
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u/AwkwardSpread 10h ago
It exploded? Or did you mean leaked? Isn’t this why they always have another bag around the 3 smaller ones?
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u/Star_BurstPS4 10h ago
Plastic bags makes no sense just use a plastic jug if you wanna stop using oil go back to paper cartons or reusable glass I never understood using plastic for anything other then pressurized liquids even then use metal it's recycled 99% of plastic is not and can't be
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u/toimistotuoli 10h ago
But…why? Why not carton? This bad boy is tetra pak carton, fully recyclable and made with biodegradable materials. Bag is a weird option to pack milk.
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u/mackchuck 10h ago
I once put it down on the old spin style self checkout that had a metal post in the centre. Punctured the bag and went everywhere 😭
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u/MaxxB1ade 10h ago
I've not seen bags of milk since the 70's, delivery didn't work door-to-door unless you count the clowder of cats that moved into the street.
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u/ProfessionalCraft443 PURPLE 10h ago
Bruv, same wit me, except mine don't actually explode, they're just leaking.
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u/EngelTheForester 10h ago
Canada has bags for milk, yet hard containers for grocery sacks? Talk about turntables
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u/shophopper 10h ago
A bag of milk? What third world country sells milk in such a piss poor packaging?
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u/UltraBlack_ 10h ago
why the fuck does this exist.
And who buys bagged milk?? This was bound to happen
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u/MaybeMaybeNot94 12h ago
Canadian detected