New wine from old bottles.

Imagine going to the supermarket and finding all the dry goods packaged in returnable containers, coolers full of fresh milk and orange juice in washable plastic jugs, and soft drinks in returnable glass bottles. At the liquor store next door, customers bring bags full of beer bottles for return to the local brewery and wine tankards for the winery to refill. There are no disposable diapers sold in the store, just cloth ones, washed by the service across the street, which employs 20 residents full-time.

Though this may seem either like a trip back to the Good Ol' Days, or a vision of a super eco-sensitive store of the future, versions of this fictional town do exist. Diaper services washing cloth diapers and dairies using refilled milk bottles are experiencing a resurgence in numbers -- and in consumer popularity. Refillable bottles for beer and soft drinks continue to deliver excellent value, and American wineries -- historically reluctant to emulate the European practices of washing and reusing wine bottles -- are beginning to realize the significant savings that bottle reuse offers. (A vineyard can collect and wash a bottle for 40 percent of the cost of a new bottle.)

Refillable milk bottles, already making a comeback in many natural foods stores, provide a low-cost container for milk while encouraging local processing, thus providing employment for the local community. A survey conducted by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (LSR) reveals that dairies charge consumers an average of four cents per half-gallon less for milk in refillable containers than for milk bottled in non-returnable ones.

According to dairy plant representatives, majority of savings quite simply comes from the decreased need for new milk containers. Disposable containers are thrown away after a single trip, while glass bottles are refilled on average 20 to 30 times before they are broken or lost. Dairies refilling plastic milk jugs (made from high-density polyethylene [HDPE] or polycarbonate resin) do so an average 50 times before discarding them, according to industry sources.

Refillable milk containers are particularly popular in towns with a local milk supply. Residents of Vermont, which produces more fluid milk per capita than any other state but Wisconsin, mostly drink milk that is processed and bottled out of state, then trucked back. Vermont Country Milk recently reopened a closed processing plant in Shelburne and began refilling milk bottles with Vermont milk for Vermont stores. The dairy puts milk on the shelves the day of milking, two to three days before milk arrives from out-of-state processors.

A half-gallon of milk from Vermont Country Dairy costs more than a half-gallon imported back from out of state in paperboard and plastic jugs, but the dairy has had little problem selling fresh, high-quality milk, and is producing over 10,000 gallons per month from its Shelburne plant.

Ernie Schroeder, president of Schroeder Milk Company in St. Paul, Minnesota, claims that his milk bottled in refillable plastic, sells for between six and 12 cents per gallon less than milk bottled in disposable containers. By bottling in refillable HDPE jugs, the dairy saves $2.3 million in energy costs, saves consumers hundreds of thousands of dollars through lower shelf prices, and diverts over 150 tons of disposable paper board and plastic cartons from landfills each year. The return to refillables is not isolated to Vermont and Minnesota -- dairies in New York, Washington, Oregon, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Utah are refilling milk bottles every day.

Dairies are not the only industry returning to returnables. Soft drink bottlers and breweries are switching, too. Wine and beer makers are taking note of profitable refilling operations elsewhere in the world and are reinstating the practice here. Vinland Wine Cellars in Middletown, Rhode Island has a program to collect and reuse its 750-milliliter glass bottles. They call it the "two-fer-12 plan." The vineyard exchanges two bottles of wine for every 12-bottle case of Vinland empties brought to the vineyard. As another example, ENCORE, a nonprofit organization in Richmond, California, has been collecting and washing wine bottles for 15 years. The group sells the bottles back to California vintners which refill the bottles.

In central New York State, a walk through one of the 181 Stewart's convenience stores offers a glimpse into a possible future. Debunking the image of convenience stores as havens for excessive packaging and waste, Stewart's sells all its own brand of beverages in refillable, returnable containers. All of its juice containers, soft drink bottles, and milk bottles are returned and refilled by the chain. The majority of Stewarts's one million weekly customers prefer the refillables. selecting the chain's own brands over the national brands three to one.

When the soft drink industry first introduced disposable containers, there was a distinctly lukewarm public response. "The introduction of the nonreturnable bottle is not the product of an express consumer demand as much as the result of pressure brought on the soda makers by the aggressive packaging and retail sectors," wrote John Riley in his 1958 history of the soft drink industry. Public reaction notwithstanding, by 1971 nonreturnable containers captured 60 percent of the market. Twenty years later, less than 10 percent of beer and soft drink containers are refilled.

Because they do not have to be returned to the manufacturer, disposable products favor larger distribution areas. Like Vermont, whose milk is processed mostly out of state, many areas of the country lost local processing facilities with the advent of disposable containers. That trend resulted in fewer companies dominating the industry. Indeed, in the last two decades the soft drink industry has undergone so great a consolidation that two-thirds of U.S. bottling plants bottle either Coca-Cola Company or Pepsico products.

There is little debate about reuse creating jobs. A study of the effects of bottle bills on regional economies conducted by the University of Maine found that a collection system for the state would employ 480 workers in picking up bottles alone, and 1,272 jobs overall. Reuse operations interviewed around the nation concur with the Maine study: Reuse increases employment.

Dairies add employees to load washing machines and sort the returned bottles when they deliver in returnable containers. One dairy manager calculates an extra $115,000 per year on payroll to refill 2.4 million gallons a year. He is quick to point out, however, that he saves well over this amount in decreased purchase of HDPE containers. "Dollars we were using to buy fresh resin we now take...and buy more labor," he says.

Although it often seems that America is addicted to disposable products and will never "return to reuse," the increased presence and acceptance of companies which do reuse products gives hope that someday they will. The environmental benefits, increased community employment and the lower cost of reusing consumer goods give every community reason to encourage reuse.

TIM SWOPE is a researcher with the Washington-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance.