About once a week, I head to my local store to pick up some things that I’ll need for the week, including some milk. Milk is always one of those tricky purchases, because you have such a short amount of time to use all of it before it expires. Thats why, whenever I go to buy milk, the first thing I do is look at the “sell by” date printed on the carton. But if I were buying milk in Montana, this is something that I would not need to worry about. That’s because in Montana, there is a law stating that milk cannot be sold or donated 12 days after pasteurization. This unusually strict law has forced grocers across Montana to dump thousands of gallons of what most would consider perfectly good milk each week. It’s for this reason that a documentary film crew from Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic recently travelled to Missoula, Montana to get the inside scoop on the state’s milk law.

Montana has by far the stricted law in the United States governing the “sell by” date of milk, and is only one of two states to even have a law that has a requirement for the number of days that milk can sit on a retailer’s shelf. That other state is Pennsylvania, where milk is allowed to sit on shelves for 17 days. Other states either just require that a date is printed without actually specifying any guidelines for that date, or, do not have a law at all.

Harvard Food and Law Policy Clinic director Emily Broad Leib stated that “this has been part of a long-running interest of ours that’s around how we’re wasting so much of the food we produce in the U.S. We’re looking at how these laws–like the law we’re looking at in Montana–are the cause of that waste.” One of goals of the documentary crew to use this case to illustrate the issue of food waste and how food expiration and “sell by” dates contribute to that problem.

Emily Deddensm, a law student working on the documentary, explained that they “went through a bunch of big ideas throughout the semester and finally settled on this law in Montana, which requires milk to be thrown out 12 days after pasteurization” because they “just thought this is good because it’s such an extreme example of the bigger problem.” To them, this was a perfect example of food being thrown out and wasted far before it needs to be.

This Montana law was established in 1980 by the Montana Livestock Board, and despite people’s countless attempts to change it, has remained firmly in place since then. Since studies show that the milk is actually just as fresh after 28 days, the documentary team set out to try and figure out what consumers actually think that arbitrary “sell by” date means.

According to Broad Lieb:

This law makes no sense. It’s really bad for consumers. But even though Montana is the strictest on milk, other states are strict on other things. Again, it’s not just milk. With all of these foods, it’s a quality date. It’s when the manufacturer thinks you get the peak quality on that food. And yet, 90 percent of consumers think it’s about safety, and they throw perfectly good food away.

While being interviewed, Missoula grocer Jim Edwards explained that dairies are the ones that do not want this rule to change. That’s because it means that grocers like him have to buy more milk to fill up their shelves. In addition, it keeps milk prices higher in Montana than in surrounding states.

He also explained that this law makes no sense when actually considering how long it takes a gallon of milk to go bad. According to Edwards:

Little cartons of milk, they go bad quick. But they’re dated for 30 days or something like that. But the gallons never go bad. Half gallons go bad before gallons because anything in a bigger container will last longer. It’s just like wine. A great big huge bottle of wine will age better than a small bottle of wine.

Yet it is the larger gallons that have the sooner expiration dates while the smaller, half gallons have later dates.

According to the documentary crew, most people are unaware that they are throwing away perfectly good milk. Broad Lieb explained that “most people think that if they eat that food after the date, they are going to get sick.” From personal experience, I can say that this is something that I have thought–and have never chanced. I’ve always thrown away food or milk that has reached the date printed on the container.

This is why another goal of the documentary is to raise consumer awareness about the actual meanings of expiration and “sell by” dates. So far, they are already doing a decent job just by sharing information about the documentary. Next time I’ll think twice about throwing away my “spoiled” milk.

Brittany Alzfan

Brittany Alzfan is a student at the George Washington University majoring in Criminal Justice. She was a member of Law Street’s founding Law School Rankings team during the summer of 2014. Contact Brittany at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Harvard Law Documentary Uncovers the Truth About Expiration Dates appeared first on Law Street.

A thrifty friend used to point out that the savings at a store sale are misleading. While a shopper can save money on a marked down item, he would save even more if he refrained from purchasing it in the first place, since they probably do not actually need it. One is lured in by the promise of a lesser burden, in this case financial. This concept applies to the disposal process as well.

Composting is a process by which food scraps and other organic leftovers are added to a specially prepared soil so as to create a nutrient-rich mixture. This is a sustainable practice for several reasons.

1. Composting lessens the amount of trash we produce, which ultimately ends up in a landfill. One can break this process down further: consider the reduced amount of air and noise pollution that would result from fewer garbage trucks traveling the roads, or the reduced number of garbage bags produced (and the environmental consequences of the manufacturing process therein).
2. Composting is recycling at its maximum. This special soil often serves as the site for small gardens, or even larger scale agricultural purposes. Composting uses waste to produce something new by natural means. Even formal recycling, which is still a vital practice in which everyone should partake, requires a detailed mechanized process of breaking down and re-manufacturing the products in order to be redistributed.
3. Composting instills a sense of community participation and teamwork. Its sites are often locally oriented. People feel like they are pitching in and doing their part both to help the earth as individuals and as group, and working toward a more sustainable future.

A  recent New York Times article detailed the growth of the New York City school composting program, which started in 2012, and now includes more than two hundred schools. Again, this is a fantastic program and participants are confident that eventually public school composting will be city wide. The program does not encourage children to pursue healthier eating habits. The author of the article, Al Baker, quoted one school’s assistant principal who offered consolation by explaining that even though the children are not eating the healthy foods more, at least it’s not going to waste. Part of this sticky situation is a series of city health regulations that forbid the redistribution of foods once the packages have been opened, Baker clarifies. Therefore, when the children take the healthy foods on their trays and then do not eat them, it goes to composting instead of trash so this helps balance things out.

While this is true, composting offers us a buffer against wasteful lifestyles and slightly reduces the environmental consequences that would result. Rather, it is up to us not to depend on new practices as excuses for bad habits. We would be better off with a more successful attempt at getting children to eat healthy, or at the very least, not take the food on their trays if they absolutely will not eat it. The less we take, the less we dispose, which is a better practice regardless of the means of disposal.

We must be cautious not to be lulled into a false sense of accomplishment like when we buy store items on sale. I recently worked at a conservation society fundraiser where it was made known to the guests that food scraps would not be trashed, but composed, keeping with the organization’s philosophy. I was astounded by the amount of uneaten food that went into these receptacles. What was the cause of this? Of course, we as Westerners have been criticized by others, and rightly do not hesitate to criticize ourselves, for our overindulgence and lack of appreciation for the great gift that is a full belly three times per day. This seemed excessive, though. Could it be that people were less conflicted about not finishing their food because they knew that it would be composted and not trashed?

Fortunately, composting is probably here to stay. It offers us many opportunities and we should take advantage of them. The very fact that the concept is catching wind is indicative of the general trend in consciousness toward environmentally friendly behavior. But we must be cautious not to become too dependent on it, content to sit back and create waste knowing that somebody else will take care of the problem and turn negative impact into something positive and productive for us. Composting should be a calling card inviting us to take action on our own initiative.

Whether it’s burning fewer fossil fuels, recycling plastics, or finishing our vegetables, the path to sustainability lies not just in improved technologies or more efficient practices, but in responsible individual consumer decisions.

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Franklin R. Halprin (@FHalprin) holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Franklin at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Ksd5 via Wikipedia]

Franklin R. Halprin

Franklin R. Halprin holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Frank at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Composting is Great, Reducing Waste Output is Better appeared first on Law Street.