Retailers and dairies are embracing a new container for milk that is cheaper to ship. Amy Wise said the tall gallon jug caused milk to spill everywhere.

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

NORTH CANTON, Ohio - A simple change to the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by the retail giants Wal-Mart and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less.
What’s not to like- Plenty, as it turns out.
The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk.
“I hate it,” said Lisa DeHoff, a cafe owner shopping in a Sam’s Club here.
“It spills everywhere,” said Amy Wise, a homemaker.
But retailers are undeterred . The new gallon jugs, which hold 3.8 liters, have many advantages from their point of view .
The redesign of the gallon milk jug, experts say, is an example of the changes likely to play out around the world economy over the next two decades. In an era of soaring global demand and higher costs for energy and materials, virtually every aspect of the economy needs to be re-examined, they say, and many products must be redesigned for greater efficiency.
“This is a key strategy as a path forward,” said Anne Johnson, the director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a project of the nonprofit group GreenBlue. “Re-examining, ‘What are the materials we are using- How are we using them- And where do they go ultimately?’”
Wal-Mart Stores is already moving down this path. But if the milk jug is any indication, some of the changes will take getting used to on the part of consumers. Many spill milk when first using the new jugs.
“When we brought in the new milk, we were asking for feedback,” said Heather Mayo, vice president for merchandising at Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart. “And they’re saying, ‘Why’s it in a square jug- Why’s it different- I want the same milk. What happened to my old milk-’ ”
Mary Tilton tried to educate consumers recently as she stood at a Sam’s Club in North Canton, about 80 kilometers south of Cleveland, luring shoppers with cookies and milk as she showed them how to pour from the new jugs.
“Just tilt it slowly and pour slowly,” Ms. Tilton said to passing customers as she talked about the jugs’ environmental benefits and cost savings.
The new jug marks a sharp break with the way dairies and grocers have traditionally produced and stocked milk.
Early one recent morning, the creators and producers of the new tall rectangular jugs donned goggles and white coats to walk the noisy, chilly production lines at Superior Dairy in Canton, Ohio. Five generations of the founder’s family, the Soehnlens, have worked there.
Today, they bottle and ship two different ways. The old way is inefficient and laborintensive, according to members of the family. The other day, a worker was using a long hook to drag plastic crates loaded with jugs of milk onto a conveyor belt.
The crates are necessary because the shape of old-fashioned milk jugs prohibits stacking them atop one another. The crates take up a lot of room, they are unwieldy to move, and extra space must be left in delivery trucks to take empty ones back from stores to the dairy.
But with the new jugs, the milk crates are gone. Instead, a machine stacks the jugs, with cardboard sheets between layers. Then the entire pallet, four layers high, is wrapped in plastic and moved with a forklift.
The company estimates this kind of shipping has cut labor by half.
More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam’s Club coolers, and no empty crates need to be picked up, reducing trips to each Sam’s Club store to two a week, from five, a big fuel savings. Also, Sam’s Club can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80.
The whole operation is so much more efficient that milk coming out of a cow in the morning winds up at a Sam’s Club store by that afternoon, compared with several hours later or the next morning by the old method.
The question now is whether customers will go along.
As Ms. Tilton gave her in-store demonstration the other day at the Sam’s Club here, customers stood around her, eating cookies and sipping milk. “Would you like to take some home today-” she asked.
A shopper named Jodi Kauffman gave the unusual jugs a glance. “Maybe,” she said.