Why did “they” take a really great package design and add three pieces of plastic to it? In the waxed carton on the right there is the plastic cap, the plastic safety seal and the embedded plastic threads for the cap.
The package on the left takes anywhere from a few months to a few years for it to decompose. The package on the right takes a hundred years or more to decompose because of all the plastic.
With the milk carton on the left you can quickly open it and then drink from it. With the carton on the right you have to first unscrew the cap, pull off and dispose of the safety seal and then try to drink from it while the folded top portion catches you under the nose.
The local dairy in my area packages their half & half, which I use for coffee, using the package on the left. They also use environmentally friendly ice cream packaging without the shrink wrap plastic on the outside. If you can, please purchase your dairy products that are packaged in the easy to open carton on the left rather than the carton on the right with the embedded plastic.
My local dairies half & half is also ten or twenty cents cheaper than those packaged with the plastic cap.
OK, maybe peeled orange wedges in a plastic package is worse, but the plastic cap on a waxed carton is a close second.