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Fonterra started a trial for Fonterra Milk for Schools in Northland in late 2012.
Fonterra believed they could make a long lasting difference to Kiwi kid’s health by providing milk everyday through the Fonterra Milk for Schools programme. They said ‘Milk is an important building block for good nutrition and we want Kiwi kids to grow up drinking milk because it is good for them’.
The milk used is sterilized or ultra-heat treated (UHT). This process kills all the spores and microorganisms in the milk and means the milk can be stored in cardboard tetra paks for 6-9 months. Each tetra pak contains 200 mls of milk which is ¼ of the daily calcium requirement for children.
Milk contractors deliver the milk to schools across New Zealand in their trucks.
At our school we see the same man every fortnight delivering a new supply of milk for our kids to drink. Our school caretaker or milk monitors load the new supplies of Fonterra milk into our basement or into a fridge down in the Middle School.
Fonterra has given our school two fridges to keep the milk cool. The job of our milk monitors is to check every day how many cartons of milk need to go to each classroom. These numbers are on a board in the staffroom. The cartons are then taken from the fridges to the classrooms at the end of lunchtime. The milk monitors then refill the fridges with milk to cool for the next day.
The milk programme is not compulsory in our school. Some kids are allergic to milk and others are fussy and don’t drink milk.
We did a survey and asked the kids in our school what they thought the milk tasted like. Some thought it tasted sweet, others thought it tasted creamy. Most liked it but some didn’t.
After the children have drunk their milk they fold the carton up into a sort of flag shape and place it in blue recycle bins given to us by Fonterra.
Our caretaker empties the milk cartons into a bigger bin outside to be collected by the milk contractor next time he comes to deliver milk.
Fonterra sends the milk cartons overseas to Thailand where they are made into strong wall panels. So next time you go to Thailand remember to have look at their walls.