A Better Yogurt Container

By jjacquet on October 6, 2009.

In North America, we have thick plastic yogurt containers (come to think of it, we have thick yogurt, too) that one could use over and over and over again (except almost no one does). I don't understand why we don't do it like they do in the UK, where they have these really thin plastic containers that are sheathed with cardboard labels. It seems to me that there is overall less waste and both container and label can be recycled.

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Cottage cheese containers have moved to the thinner plastic with cardboard label, so maybe the yogurt containers will follow in the same direction. (Though I suspect that the two-part containers are slightly more expensive to manufacture.)

The yoghurt containers in Japan are made of pretty thin plastic too. No paper labels though - the container's opaque and printed upon.

BTW - we wouldn`t call such a label 'cardboard' in the UK, just 'paper'. Is this another Transatlantic difference?

In my town, in CT, where recycling is close to a fetish, wide-mouth plastic containers (such as yoghurt is packaged in) are not considered recyclable. I have never gotten a straight answer as to the reasoning behind this.

Making your own is easy, but if you do a lot of Indian cooking it sometimes is inconvenient given the time to prepare, so we buy a pint or a quart sometimes.

Any ideas as to why wide-mouth jars aren't acceptable?

I used to reuse yogurt containers, until the manufacturers replaced their covers with bits of tinfoil. Now I only buy yogurt in large containers, with proper covers, and keep the container after I'm done.

I miss the little containers, though. They were useful.