please empty your brain below
I like my tea almost completely white therefore I do not contribute to this problem - except when they fill it up so full that you can barely pour any milk in.

At least on airplanes they fill the cup about 70% full but then I usually have to request extra milk anyway.

John | 14.01.14 - 7:13 a.m. | #

I drink my tea black so make an extra contribution to this problem. I alway wonder if the milk gets 're-used', especially if none of it has been used. Same with those little pots of butter...

EskimoPie | 14.01.14 - 7:20 a.m. | #

I balance John out by having virtually n o milk in my tea. It needs to be brewed strong and then served with barely enough milk to colour it.

When I'm in a cafe that allows you to pick your own milk jug from a tray, I always search for the emptiest so that I know I've done everything I can not to make this problem worse.

Dave | 14.01.14 - 7:32 a.m. | #

I'm not condoning waste, but apparently UK milk production was 1.15 billion litres in December last year, the highest figure for the month since 1994/5. I am still trying to picture that volume. Once again a DG post takes me off on a wholly unexpected tangent first thing in the morning.

Waterhouse | 14.01.14 - 7:37 a.m. | #

Does every British place offer separate milk and tea all the time? In Hong Kong, when we order milked tea, the bar simply throws (evaporated) milk into the tea and make us drink 'em all. (Of course, in "high-class" restaurants the milk is still offered in jugs)

Patrickov | 14.01.14 - 7:38 a.m. | #

Given the amount of water that goes into milk production (200 litres per glass, apparently), I'd say that wasting it is something that we ought to worry about a little more.

There's good food safety reasons for not reusing the contents of little jugs - there's no easy way to keep track of how long it's been out the fridge for; or whether someone's sneezed in it, for example - but they really ought not to be overfilled. I far prefer it in coffee shops when they just have a big flask next to the sugar and stirrers.

martin | 14.01.14 - 7:43 a.m. | #

Costa will give you a milk jug for a coffee too if you go for say an Americano. Personally I'm not a fan of of the overly milky frothy coffees so go for the simple white Americano option. A lot of places will just add the milk at the end but if you're staying in at Costa you'll get a jug of milk alongside.

Croc | 14.01.14 - 7:49 a.m. | #

£2.10 for a small teapot serving one cup of tea? I hope they provide extra hot water on request.

Andrew | 14.01.14 - 7:50 a.m. | #

Hear, hear DG - waste is bad - but I'm a milk lover and usually drink up the leftover milk on its own at the end. Why has no-one else mentioned this?!

I too like milk in my Earl Grey and funny you should mention this as only on Sunday I was in Rye in Sussex and enjoyed a pot of Earl Grey in a small cafe where a £1.60 pot stretched to no fewer than three cups, with sufficient milk but no surplus, although I must say the by usingit all tea was a bit more milky than I like.

Just drink the surplus - you've paid for it!

Does anyone else do what I do in an Indian and keep the chutney after the poppadum stage, and add some to the main meal. I really like it and it's such a waste having access o all that chutney and they take it away again. The same question as milk arises - do they re-use the leftovers after people have sneezed in it?

Stephen | 14.01.14 - 8:30 a.m. | #

I've wondered about this exact same thing, DG. I do the same as Stephen and make a point of drinking the rest of the milk by itself after all the tea has gone - I hate seeing things wasted! I can't believe they'd serve leftovers to someone else...

Mike Hall | Homepage | 14.01.14 - 8:38 a.m. | #

I've always been too concerned with the usually woefully inadequate tea:water ratio in cafe pots to worry about the milk, but good point.

Sarah | Homepage | 14.01.14 - 9:05 a.m. | #

An excellent post. How can anything that refers to tea not be? However, the real question should be "Should we ban teabags and only use real tea"? Teabags are the first sign of the decline of a civilisation.

PL | 14.01.14 - 9:07 a.m. | #

I do the same as Stephen and Mike, drink the left over.
Mind you the working mens cafes I try to use normally serve tea already milked.

John | 14.01.14 - 9:58 a.m. | #

Something has to be done to keep what few dairy farmers we still have in business. Otherwise I agree, such waste is ridiculous.

Why haven't the bean counters realised that potential profit is just being thrown away? In a time of austerity you'd have thought someone might have realised.

Otherwise I have coffee when out, so no problem there.

Bronchitikat | 14.01.14 - 10:12 a.m. | #

A while back I went into a Starbucks and ordered a hot chocolate and - being an unfussy sort of bloke - I added 'just basic... no cream or anything fancy, thanks'
I moved to the end to await my cup and was given one with cream.
I said again I hadn't wanted cream but - before I could say 'oh well, you've made it now... ' they'd grabbed it back and chucked it down the sink
!!!??? :(
If that was their idea of trying to keep the customer pleased, seeing this sort of waste actually had the complete opposite effect

RogerW | 14.01.14 - 11:21 a.m. | #

A fun discussion, but as DG said, hardly the most important problem facing society today.

But isn't that a very human thing? Not having any profound thoughts about how to combat something like war, or world hunger, or whatever, we have diversionary conversations about milk waste.

Given that milk is now suspected of being not-quite-as-good-for-you-as-we-used-to-think, I'd like to remind those who drink the leftover milk "to avoid waste" that they may be harming themselves. One (probably minor) cause of the obesity epidemic is "I had to eat/drink it so that it wouldn't be thrown away". Sometimes more waste can mean less waist.

Malcolm | 14.01.14 - 11:39 a.m. | #

I have a similar problem with coffee which I drink black. Even after asking for a plain black filter coffee I often get given half a cup of coffee and a jug of milk.
But then I have the cheek to ask them to take the milk back and also to fill the cup up with coffee too.

popartist | 14.01.14 - 11:47 a.m. | #

I understand Bronchitikat's comment about potential profit being thrown away - but in fact, in many cases, this is a deliberate marketing ploy!

A customer might be happy to pay just £1.50 for a cup of tea, but by providing more than the customer will drink, a cafe can charge a premium price for just a few pennies extra cost to the business. The customer then perceives £2.10 as a fairer price point.

There are examples of this everywhere nowadays. I'm reminded of DG's post about the 'added value' of the 'full experience' tour on the Dangleway. Everywhere you find yourself thinking 'it's an ok extra but I didn't really need that' this strategy is likely being put to use.

James Armitage | Homepage | 14.01.14 - 12:36 p.m. | #

tea with milk? ...who's idea was that i wonder? real question is what to have with it...biscuits, cake or chocolate?

E | 14.01.14 - 12:41 p.m. | #

I never use the butter pats given with toasted teacakes and the like....similarly wasted. I don't eat banana skins either...wasted...oh no they're used as skates hereabouts!

B | 14.01.14 - 12:59 p.m. | #

Fascinati....zzz

Adam L | 14.01.14 - 2:03 p.m. | #

Why would anyone want to put watery fat in their tea or coffee?

Mick | 14.01.14 - 2:05 p.m. | #

The dairy farmers must be mooing all the way to the bank.

| 14.01.14 - 3:24 p.m. | #

I don't have milk in my tea. But I have yet to find an establishment that will reduce the often extortionate price because of this. I often land up paying a premium because the tea I want - Jasmine Green, Earl Grey, or Ginger and Lemon is classed as a speciality tea. The issue for me is the huge mark-up on the price of the raw materials- must be the biggest in the catering industry.

Bernard Johnson | Homepage | 14.01.14 - 7:01 p.m. | #

Nonsense about keeping the intensive dairy cattle owners in business - those factories are an environmental disaster zone - oh, and ask the badgers what they think!

HowardGWR | 14.01.14 - 9:35 p.m. | #

Chai is the new Builders

Noel | 14.01.14 - 10:22 p.m. | #

Perhaps the thing to do with all the surplus milk is to add it to Ullswater. By coincidence, there's a rather good post by XKCD today, which includes the fact that the amount of water in Ullswater is about right to make tea with the world's annual production - which would then require 20 days of the UK electricity supply to heat up - a mad but very entertaining read at http://what-if.xkcd.com/79/

He doesn't cover the amount of milk which would need to be added, but I am sure somebody could have a go at that bit.

marek | 14.01.14 - 11:39 p.m. | #

@Patrickov

This is because you were drinking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong-style_milk_tea

I don't really know how you would order a proper English tea, perhaps one of the coffee chains does it or the bar at a 5-star western hotel. But I would not pay $50 for a cup of tea in HK when you can get an HK tea for $10.

John | 15.01.14 - 8:00 a.m. | #

Costa serves very little tea compared to coffee sales - the impact of wastage is very small.

Much higher, I'd wager, is the amount of unused milk wasted in containers that go off in our fridges.

Tim Dunn | Homepage | 15.01.14 - 9:13 a.m. | #

When I tell my friends they should read DG because they are missing something unique this is exactly the kind of post I mean : )

(And for the record, most cafes I frequent, in the mean streets of working class south Bristol, pre-milk the tea, then proceed to squeeze the bag to within an inch of it's life...)

Ben | Homepage | 15.01.14 - 4:22 p.m. | #

There must be lots of these little waste examples. I can think of the little bars of soap in hotels. Paper napkins: it's either feast or famine on how many you are given.

Claire | 16.01.14 - 6:33 a.m. | #

My wife likes very milky tea, and often uses all she has been given plus all of mine too. Other than that she is, as you put it, a 'normal human being'.

Peter CS | 17.01.14 - 12:20 p.m. | #

Here in the USA Starbucks has milk and cream in vacuum jugs near the serving counter. They hold about a quart and will keep it cold for a couple of hours.

sarah | 19.01.14 - 4:13 a.m. | #











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