To get the word out about environmental concerns takes a variety of media, perhaps a news release, a public protest, a letter to a politician or a really good song.
Back in 2002 Canadian folksinger Nancy White released a tune that caught the attention of a lot a people, and the chorus went something like this:
“Stickers on fruit! Stickers on fruit,
God, I hate those stickers on fruit!
Stickers on the apple, stickers on the pear,
Why do they put those stickers on there?”
Her lyrics went on to tell of her personal frustrations of long-time fighting for environmental awareness, but also acknowledging that a lot of other major topics were competing for the headlines and perhaps dealing with those annoying stickers on her pears was a personal concern.
Yet thousands of fans immediately related to this household task of carefully peeling those darn plastic stickers off each apple.
That was 22 years ago. However, just yesterday I received the newest edition of The Grower, a newspaper published by the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association and their lead story was about those price lookup stickers (called PLUs in the industry).
It would appear that PLUs have been a concern to several organizations which are part of our vast and intricate agricultural industries. One of the reveals within the story was the levels of complexity that growers and retailers have to manipulate to get their product from field to table.
No, despite a limited imagination, there is not a minimum wage earner sitting on a stool in a packing warehouse, peeling and sticking PLUs on open crates of apples. Tad more involved than that quaint notion. In reality there are automated systems, one for each variety of fruit, that applies said sticker at a rate of 500 labels per minute. Yes, per minute.
And these machines must not mush the fruit, tear the skin, or miss applying to any individual kiwi, tomato, apple, peach or pear. Each fruit has its own industry standard as to when stickers can be applied (firm green fruit or soft ripe fruit?).
But what of the plastic sticker itself? Can’t they be made compostable or from another material?
Some good news on that front: the Canadian Produce Marketing Association is working with Compost Council of Canada (bet you didn’t even know they existed) to host an international conference with the International Federation of Produce Standards to discuss “the global standardization efforts around traceability, data management, and produce identification”.
While this may at first seem like an “hitting a fly with a sledgehammer” situation, it is not. This is serious stuff.
Billions upon billions of plastic PLU stickers are showing up in municipal and commercial compost facilities, thus rendering the compost as unusable. While I can pick through my backyard compost to remove a couple dozen stickers (which I probably should have removed and put in the garbage while chopping veggies in the kitchen) it is a far different story when a grocery chain drops off tons of spoiled but already stickered fruit.
A Windsor Ontario company, Accu-Label, has been creating compostable paper stickers for 23 years, but their use has not caught on yet.
But the sticker’s substrate is only a third of the problem .... adhesive chemicals are very important to consider, not just to address any transfer of chemical from sticker to fruit, but to ensure satisfactory stick-ability to either a smooth skin apple or a fuzzy peach.
Each variety has its one special formula to find that sweet spot between the stickers falling off onto the supermarket floor and needing a very sharp paring knife to remove the PLU sticker on the kitchen counter. It has to be like Goldilocks once said, “It has to be just right.” to stay on for retail purposes yet eventually flip off with a pull from a fingernail.
But we’re not done yet ... what about the inks used to print the sticker? Again, much research and experimentation has been done with water-based inks. Colours need to be right and attractive, yet not fade with an application of moisture or under bright lights. And when composted not leave a harmful residual element in the soil.
Add to these minutia is the challenge to adapt machinery to the required expectations of New Zealand, Australia, Europe and Asia. The more we import, the greater the challenge to switch from the norm.
Today’s column has drifted a bit from my usual ‘critters in the backyard’ theme, but I wanted to share with you a snapshot of some of the important work being done by the agricultural industry to ‘clean up their act’ and create an environmentally aware and sustainable industry that has to provide good food for a growing population from decreasing soil resources.
I appreciate the articles found in The Grower and recommend that you also get in touch (thegrower.org) and see all the other innovative projects that are being undertaken for our community health (including the stress reduction of peeling stickers from fruit).
