Spout Milk, which had its origins in Dunedin, has reached the milestone of stopping more than 100,000 plastic milk containers from being thrown away.
Spout was formed in 2019 after Jo Mohan, Luka Licul and Nick Jackson attended youth business accelerator Venture Up, a programme run by Creative HQ in Wellington.
Their idea was to put milk into kegs and reduce the number of plastic milk containers used in cafes.
"Kegs can be thrown around and reused thousands of times," Mr Jackson said.
The initiative was initially piloted at Dunedin cafe The Corner Store before being launched to the public. Spout had since expanded from servicing just cafes to now working with a diverse group of businesses, including hotels, accounting firms and ports.
"We now supply across Christchurch, Dunedin, Central Otago and Queenstown. Covid impacting the hospitality industry meant we had to pivot away from just cafes and, as it turns out, there are many other businesses that can benefit from having milk on tap," Mr Jackson said.
It was estimated more than 177 million plastic milk bottles were thrown away every year and only a fraction of those were recycled.
There was still a long way to go to make plastic bottles a thing of the past, he said.
