Got glass? Alaska’s only cow milk dairy needs those bottles back.

PALMER — Scott Plagerman, the owner and operator of the state’s only commercial producer of cow’s milk, knew distributing fresh milk year-round from Delta Junction was never going to be a simple task.

But recently Plagerman found himself facing a problem he didn’t see coming when he and his wife started Alaska Range Dairy about two years ago: 20,000 wandering glass bottles.

The dairy sells glass half-gallon jugs of fresh milk at about 20 retailers from Fairbanks to Homer, with an additional 20 carrying only yogurt or gallon-sized plastic milk jugs. Customers who buy the half-gallons plunk down a $3 deposit for each glass jug. When the milk is gone, they can trade in the empties for a fresh milk supply, which can run about $8 before the cost of the bottle, or return the bottle and get their deposit back.

At least that was the idea, said Plagerman. What he didn’t anticipate was just how many people would instead keep the bottles, toss them in the trash or, in at least one instance, sell them on eBay.

If people don’t start returning the bottles, the dairy might have to stop using refillable glass and switch completely to less expensive plastic, he said.

“As much glass as we’re losing, it would be more environmentally friendly to not use it because of all the effort that goes into it,” Plagerman said. “They’re made on the east coast of Canada, so they’re about as far away as you can get.”

Alaska Range Dairy, which opened in 2021, became the last in-state fresh milk dairy when Palmer’s Havemeister Dairy shuttered that same year. While Kodiak Goat Dairy previously shipped out bottled goat’s milk, that business shifted during the pandemic to only selling cheese and ice cream with sales limited to Kodiak Island, officials there said.

Of the over 60,000 bottles Plagerman has filled and sent out since opening, he expects about 4,000 to be in active “circulation” across the state at any given time, sitting full of milk in refrigerators or knocking around kitchens and trunks.

And while thousands of others have been returned to retailers and made their way back to be refilled, about 20,000 have gone missing in the two years since the dairy opened, he said.

Even before arriving in Delta Junction for filling, the bottles have already traveled by rail, barge and truck, a journey that requires new ones to be ordered as much as nine months in advance. And thanks to the rising cost of goods, the bottles, like seemingly everything else, are now increasing in price, Plagerman said.

Early this month, the dairy issued a plea via social media for customers to return the bottles, a message that sparked at least a few chagrined milk buyers to bring their collection into Palmer retailer Nonessentials, said owner Denise Nelson.

All told, the store collected about 58 bottles in the week after Plagerman posted his message — about double the normal returns, Nelson said.

“One lady kind of wouldn’t make eye contact while she was dropping them,” she said.

Plagerman said he won’t have a count of how many wandering jug owners his message found until the delivery trucks reach him again toward the end of the month.

For some people, however, the jugs are more valuable without milk.

In Fairbanks, Kevin Thompson has two of the bottles listed for sale on eBay for about $60 each. Thompson, who runs a small antiques storefront but said he has 20,000 items listed on eBay, said he purchased the bottles at an estate sale.

“Cost me quite a bit to get those,” Thompson said in an email. “I’ve never sold one of those yet, but eventually someone somewhere will want one for their collection. Alaska dairy bottles can go pretty high.”

At Anchorage’s Blue Market AK, where almost all items are sold unpackaged or in reusable containers, the glass jugs are an important part of the grocery’s no-container goal, said owner Jennifer Gordon. While she’s not surprised that shoppers hang on to the bottles, Gordon said she also knows from her work with food producers that the expense of packaging can be a major pain point for businesses.

“It kind of makes or breaks some of the makers,” she said. “They don’t want to put stuff in plastic but they can’t afford to always use glass.”

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The missing milk jugs are far from the only financial problem the dairy has faced since opening.

Simply getting milk onto retail shelves was much more challenging than Plagerman anticipated, he said. While small retailers like Nonessentials in Palmer and Blue Market in Anchorage as well as Three Bears locations around the state are faithful customers, it just wasn’t enough to sustain the business, he said.

Earlier this year, the dairy was dumping about 800 gallons of milk down the drain each week after a deal to get large volumes to military base commissary grocery stores suddenly fell through, he said. Thanks to a chance personal connection with a Walmart buyer and months of discussion, Plagerman said, he was finally able to break into shelves at the chain in Wasilla and Fairbanks, vastly expanding weekly milk orders and sales.

But if he’s to get past the break-even point and stay in business long term, he needs to expand his herd from 60 to 80 animals and sell more milk. He’s hoping to do that soon by putting bottles in more Walmarts, such as locations in Anchorage, he said.

“I do have to be careful — they’re a big, corporate company and I can’t bank all of my business on that,” he said. “But it’s a lot better-looking future now.”

More immediately, he expects a new shipment of glass bottles to arrive in the new year, and hopes a parade of the missing jugs will return so he can start filling them again.

If not, Plagerman said he’ll need customers to help him stay in business by tolerating plastic half-gallons for a while.

“If the customer won’t take short-term plastic, then basically we’re dumping milk down the drain,” he said. “That’s a killer, there.”