In Europe, food retailers aiming to cut plastic packaging by ditching stickers on fruit and vegetables are starting to move to hi-tech natural branding.
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The humble fruit sticker may seem an unlikely cause for environmental concern but removing it from produce could create huge savings in plastic, energy and CO2 emissions.
In response to consumer demand for less packaging, Dutch fruit and vegetable supplier Nature & More and Swedish supermarket ICA have joined forces to run a trial to replace sticky labels with a laser mark.
Dubbed natural branding, the technique uses a strong light to remove pigment from the skin of produce. The mark is invisible once the skin is removed and doesn’t affect shelf life or eating quality. By using natural branding on all of the organic avocados we would sell in one year we would save 200 kilometres of plastic, 30 centimetres wide.
This technology has been around for several years but has previously been used for marketing or branding, without being explicitly linked to sustainability.
Food waste reduction has become a hot issue. Denmark is leading the charge, with the world’s first-ever food surplus supermarket opening in Copenhagen. WeFood partners with major supermarket chains, butchers, fruit importers and “nut bars” to collect out-of-date, damaged or left-over food to sell up to 50 per cent cheaper than regular supermarkets.
France has introduced a fine for supermarkets that waste or dump edible food, while Italy is providing incentives – such as garbage tax reductions and waiving the need to declare donations in advance – to increase food donations. In the US, the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont are leading the way, banning the disposal of organic matter in landfills, challenging business as usual in a country where 52 million tonnes of food is sent to landfill a year, while another 10 million tonnes is discarded or left unharvested.
US-based think tank reFED recently released a road map aimed at reducing food waste by 20 per cent. It advocated standardised date labelling, smaller plates in restaurants and consumer education, as well as effective policy and tax incentives to encourage food bank donations. These are all things that we can consider in Australia as we see a movement towards a national food waste strategy for the first time.