Jack Ward, director of the British Growers Association, says the future of fresh produce packaging must be considered from more than one perspective
While I can appreciate the argument for reducing or eliminating as much packaging as possible in all walks of life, I’m concerned that the Wrap proposal to ban plastic packaging on produce by 2030 is very one-dimensional.
Yet moving to a system of loose fruit and veg will require a major change in mindset for both the buying public and the supply chain.
Not everybody wants to buy and eat food that has been handled multiple by other people. We also need to consider the volume of waste generated by consumers damaging produce as they pick over – and sometimes drop – every piece of fruit and veg while they look for something that meets their expectation.
It also presents a big problem for retailers: how do you manage stock control rotation? If you fill the on-shelf crates up with loose carrots, how do you know after five days whether these carrots are those you put in five days ago, or whether there has been a rotational system?
Packaged fruit and veg makes the system much easier to manage and control. For example, every apple pack is barcoded with specific information thereby making the product much easier to track. You lose all of that control and management capability when you sell them loose. The management of fresh produce in store would inevitably become more demanding.
Added to that, how would a retailer monitor shelf-life? Take an iceberg lettuce, for example. If we sell this loose, how do you know how long it has been on a shelf if it has no label? How do you manage that in store?
At present, the system is designed for minimum in-store intervention. A supermarket employee wheels out crates of packaged produce from storage then puts them straight on the shelf. If it is loose, they will likely need someone at a higher level to triage it.
From every point of view there is a challenge. And whilst it easy for Wrap to say get rid of produce packaging, there are several considerations to take into account before we get to a Utopia where we are no longer spending millions of pounds packaging food unnecessarily.
But don’t get me wrong, what Wrap is essentially saying is absolutely right: we do need to think long and hard about packaging and the implications. Across the fresh produce industry, thousands of tonnes of plastic every week is being used, which is taken home and immediately ripped off and thrown in the bin.
Essentially what Wrap is saying is correct. But, how we get there, how we bring everybody along with us, and how we avoid the unintended consequences – of which there will be several – is key. We need a multi-dimensional approach.
