
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 12, 1993                   TAG: 9309120175
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHAT'D THEY DO WITH THE MILK? IT'S IN THE BAG

The small milk carton is facing tough competition from a squishy, plastic bag in many Northern Virginia schools.

A dozen schools in Fairfax County and two in Prince William County are giving the plastic pouches a trial run this fall, and students in 26 more Fairfax County schools will be sipping from them by the end of November.

"It's progress, isn't it?" asked Penny McConnell, director of food service for Fairfax County schools. "More and more people are doing it. . . . It's something in the future."

The plastic bag, called a mini-sip pouch, lies almost flat on a table like a half-filled water balloon. A narrow straw is used to puncture the bag.

Some school officials say the bag is sure to win the battle with the carton because it will save money and sharply cut the amount of waste that goes into landfills. Students also seem to like the pouches, even though they say it looks rather odd.

Ashley Edmonds, 9, a fourth-grader at Ravensworth Elementary in Springfield, squeezed the bag in one hand, jabbed it with a pointed straw in the other and began sipping, practically all in one smooth motion.

"It looks kind of weird," she said, squishing the bag during a break between sips. "I like it a lot because you can play around with it and you can't do that with a milk carton."

The battle between the carton and the pouch is serious business. In Fairfax alone, students drank 11.5 million servings of milk last year, nearly all of them from cartons. Nationwide, 8 billion cartons were sold, the vast majority in schools, said Gary Slack, spokesman for the Paperboard Packaging Council.

McConnell, the food service director, said she had to persuade Valley Rich Dairy in Roanoke, which supplies milk to the schools, to experiment with the plastic pouches.

Brian Edwards, a spokesman for DuPont Corp., which manufactures the pouches, said sales have increased steadily for four years, from 30,000 a day in 1989 to 3 million a day last year.

by CNB