Dominic Ryan, Sydney’s modern-day milkman, has a plan to end plastic

It could be a scene from the 1920s: a man carrying crates of glass bottles filled with milk to the doorsteps of Sydney terraces early in the morning.

Look a little closer, though, and you might notice the man is wearing modern-day sneakers.

Milkman Dominic Ryan drops daily plastic-free milk on doorsteps in Mosman and North Sydney.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

Dominic Ryan is a milkman. He drops bottles from dairies on the NSW south coast at homes in the early hours of Friday morning and collects the empties to be reused the following week.

Ryan started his milk delivery business, Restore, in October after becoming frustrated by the amount of plastic debris – bags, packaging and, yes, bottles – that washed onto the beach when it rained.

“There were things our grandparents were doing, whether they thought so at the time or not, that were really sustainable and really sensible,” he said. “Consumers want to buy things not in plastic, but we are not given a choice.”

Employing one other driver, Ryan now delivers milk to 150 homes across North Sydney and Mosman councils, as well as to some customers in the inner west where the service started last month.

“We have retirees who connect it with their childhood, but then we also have young families with children who are really tapped into the environment and want to find an alternative to plastic,” he said of his customer base.

While Restore is a boutique operation, government regulations banning single-use plastics and consumer preferences for sustainable consumption mean more people are looking to the past to reduce the impact of landfill for future generations.

Plastic shopping bags, straws and cleaning cloths – Vinnies sells bags of rags made from unusable clothing donations – have all been shunned in 2024 in a bid to reduce plastic use.

Dr Simran Talwar, a researcher at UTS’s Institute for Sustainable Futures, said consumers and policymakers could learn lessons from the past.

“There is a real opportunity to draw on those practices that worked for generations before plastics came into being,” she said.

She said practices abroad showed how past retail habits could be adapted to encourage recycling today.

For example, while Australia’s container deposit schemes involve customers returning cans and bottles to dedicated centres, in Europe, containers are more commonly returned to the shop.

“It used to be that glass bottles were returned to retail points, so it is interesting that there, where the scheme is a bit more successful, they have that same consumer experience – even if the back end of how the bottles are processed has changed,” Talwar said.

Milk delivered in Bank Street, North Sydney.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

Survey research conducted by Monash University’s School of Australian Consumer and Retail Studies last year found habits like bringing their own shopping bags, recycling and composting were significantly more popular among over-55s than younger generations.

While those aged 18 to 34 were least likely to do those things, they were more likely to buy secondhand products or recommend eco-friendly products to families and friends.

However, although consumers want to make sustainable choices, the group’s research and engagement director, Dr Eloise Zoppos, said more recent instalments of the survey showed cost-of-living pressures were now front of mind.

The survey found people from different socioeconomic backgrounds had similar attitudes towards sustainability, but household income influenced whether they would buy alternative and more expensive products.

Half of Australians earning $200,000 or more were willing to pay more for products packaged in recycled materials, compared to 36 per cent of those with an income of less than $69,999.

“That said, we also found that 42 per cent of shoppers shop more for preowned, secondhand products than at the same time last year – one option that allows price-sensitive consumers to shop in line with their value of sustainability,” Zoppos said.

Charging $5.85 for a 750ml bottle of full cream, oat or skim milk, milkman Dominic Ryan admitted that his customers pay significantly more than they would at the supermarket.

“They are people who have the luxury to pay a little bit more to do something that they think is good for the planet,” he said.

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