Produce stickers: the bane of my existence.
Okay maybe that’s a little too dramatic but they really get on my nerves.
Just like a lot of plastic waste, produce stickers are a responsibility put onto the end consumer. Their lifecycle was not considered when put into practice.
And produce stickers are pretty tiny. Eliminating them would help a little bit in the climate crisis but it wouldn’t make a huge dent.
You could argue discussing banning produce stickers is on the same level as banning single-use plastic straws. But I’m going to talk about them anyway!
Even though they are tiny, they’re a huge annoyance in my life. And they serve no purpose that can’t be done some other way.
I didn’t have any proof before that produce stickers are completely useless and are fruitless waste, just a gut instinct.
But today, I’m diving into them to back up my claims and go on a little journey through their problems, uses, and alternatives.
The problem with produce stickers
First, let’s be clear about what produce stickers are made of. The vast majority are made out of a thin piece of plastic.
Plastic such as this is not recyclable. Best case scenario for these little stickers is they end up in landfill where it will take them decades if not centuries to break down into microplastics that will pollute our water and air.
Pretty sad.
Sarah Jeong paints this picture beautifully in her article, “Fruit stickers are the scourge of the compost pile” (which I highly recommend reading, it’s full of fun little tidbits):
Oceans rise, empires fall, and the produce sticker remains — unbowed, undefeated, and thoroughly un-compostable.
If produce stickers do end up in a backyard compost pile, they won’t cause a lot of damage, they’re more so little annoyances that stick out like a sore thumb in all the organic matter, leaving gardeners to painstakingly pick them out.
They do cause problems for commercial composters, though. The stickers are so thin and tiny they slide right through the screens that are meant to filter out contaminants. This leaves the composter with a contaminated final product that they may not be able to sell. Who’s going to be happy if the compost they bought has produce stickers in it? It could leave all that organic matter to go to unused.
And compost is an amazing concoction! It takes waste and turns it into fuel for growing more food or other plants. It’s an important component to a brighter future. But it’s so annoying these little stickers cause problems in it.
We also go through a lot of these stickers in any given day, week, or year. It’s hard to know the exact number but globally, I wouldn’t be surprised if we threw away billions of produce stickers every year.
Based on some quick math about apple consumption, we can start to get an idea of the waste. The average person in the US eats 15-19 pounds of apples each year. Which comes out to about 40-60 apples per person per year. For easy math, we’ll assume 50.
There’s roughly 330 million people in the US. If each one of them eats 50 apples each per year, that’s 16.5 billion produce stickers we go through every year just for apples in the United States.
Of course, there’s other caveats. Not every apple has a produce sticker on it. These estimates could be incorrect. But it starts to give us an idea on how pervasive produce stickers are in our lives.
They’re pieces of plastic that do not need to exist.
What is the purpose of produce stickers, anyway?
Produce stickers serve a few purposes:
They reinforce the brand of the fruit or vegetable producer. (Huge asterisk here, this purpose is debatable in my opinion)
Their product lookup (PLU) codes help at the checkout to make sure the correct type of produce at the right price is being rung up. (Fun fact: these PLU codes are the same in every grocery store!)
They can help differentiate organic produce from conventionally grown produce.
None of these three purposes can only be done with produce stickers. There’s other ways to hit these goals.
Do stickers actually reinforce branding?
I honestly would say no. They’re so small and they’re not what people are looking at.
When was the last time you walked up to apples in the grocery store, ignored all the signs and labels and instead inspected the tiny little produce stickers to decide if it’s the kind of apple you wanted?
In most cases, you’re going to be looking at the signage around the produce to figure out if it’s what you want. Whether it’s organic or not, what kind it is, its price.
And signage already exists! Produce stickers don’t do anything in relation to branding, in my opinion.
Signage can also help solve purpose #3: differentiating between organic and conventionally grown produce. You might run the risk of something getting mixed up but usually organic produce is wrapped in plastic, so that’s a dead giveaway (and don’t even get me started on the produce that’s shrink-wrapped in plastic…)
Maybe a hot take, but I don’t give a damn about the brand of fruit or vegetable I’m buying, either. I do not buy my produce based on how beautifully designed their produce stickers are. I couldn’t even tell you what most look like!
All I know is I want to make fajitas and I need peppers and onions that aren’t spoiled. That’s all I’m looking for. Not everything needs a brand.
To help at the checkout, there’s a lot of options.
A few options keep coming up over and over again, from simple replacements to putting more trust in the consumer and workers.
Straight 1:1 replacement options include:
Replacing produce stickers with biodegradable alternatives.
Get rid of all kinds of stickers and instead print with vegetable-based ink onto the produce or laser engrave the information.
I’m personally not a huge fan of either of these options. Biodegradable is better than plastic, but it’s still producing something that doesn’t have to be there.
Plus, only 27% of people in the United States have access to some kind of composting program. That’s pitiful!
And while every homeowner with a yard could start composting in their backyard, it’s just not realistic to expect.
Until composting is more widespread and accessible, replacing plastic packaging with compostable packaging isn’t going to make much of a dent.
And even though sending compostable or biodegradable items to the landfill is better than sending plastic, what’s even better is sending nothing to landfill.
For that reason, printing with vegetable-based ink or laser engraving are tantalizing options. But these would require companies to purchase new equipment and trash (or more hopefully recycle) their old stuff for stickers.
The idea for laser-engraving produce is also not new. In my research I found this article from 2007 discussing the idea and asking if produce stickers would soon be phased out. 16 years later and the stickers are still here.
I just have a hard time believing every single piece of produce needs to be identified by either a sticker, ink on the produce, or an engraved identifier.
Signage by the produce could help with half of this issue. It can still tell the customer where that produce came from and give them everything they need to know. And then when it comes time to checkout, we can put more trust on cashiers and customers by:
Training cashiers to identify all produce.
Having cashiers ask customers to identify the produce they are purchasing if they are unsure on what it is.
Both of these options seem incredibly doable to me. We already have self-checkouts at the grocery stores so we as a society are already trusting customers with this task.
Are some maybe lying to save money? Sure. But that hasn’t completely crashed the system yet and the vast majority are being honest in their purchases.
Plus, people are lying to the system when the produce has stickers on them already. It wouldn’t be causing a new problem.
And we already see both of these things come into play. Cashiers don’t scour for and then read off and type in the PLU for every single piece of produce that comes their way. Many have it memorized and can identify the produce without it.
In addition, not every piece of produce has a sticker right now. Some get missed. Does trying to buy a piece of produce without a sticker shut down the whole grocery store? Nope.
Either the cashier will know what the piece of produce is or, if the cashier really doesn’t know, they ask. I’ve had that happen before and we all lived to tell the tale.
But that’s pretty low-tech and an unexciting prospect. How are you going to get people excited? It’s not novel or new and it’s putting more burden on the consumer. Very little burden but someone will complain about it. And we can’t just fix a problem with a simple, quiet solution. That doesn’t sell.
So what other options exist?
AI might actually be able to help us out here.
I know this is a big topic at the moment and people are either panicked, enthralled, or annoyed by the constant mentioning of these 2 letters (I’m in the annoyed camp myself). But hear me out.
Grocery stores could implement AI technology at their checkouts that scans and identifies what fruit or vegetable you’re purchasing. This would bypass the need for produce stickers or other identifiers and wouldn’t rely on human knowledge.
A European grocery store has implemented AI technology that can distinguish between different fruits and vegetables. But it does more than just that.
The CEO of Pixevia, the company behind the AI technology in question, says:
Our AI-based system successfully recognizes different fruits, salads, bakery goods as well as meat and dairy products, allowing customers to forgo the long and often arduous check-out process. In addition to that, it is continuously monitoring product freshness.
In case a product is approaching its expiration date or showing any signs of staleness, the dynamic pricing algorithm alerts the store manager that the product has to be sold at a lower price and later, if necessary, taken out of stock.
Here in the States, Amazon is using AI in their cashier-less grocery stores as well.
The downside to this solution is it would be an extra expense for grocery stores to implement and continue using. And AI, just like humans, can still make mistakes.
So, which is the best solution?
For me personally, I think going the route of trusting people more in their grocery store shopping experience, whether they’re using the self checkout or relying on a cashier, would be the best way to move forward.
It’s simple, it’s human, it doesn’t require any extra materials or technology. Just some learning that people are more than capable of.
Plus, we already do this at places like farmer’s markets! I know it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison to grocery stores but I’m sure there’s some way to make it work.
And, not every type of produce even gets a sticker! Grocery stores are already managing this in some way.
It’s not an unrealistic solution and in my opinion, the simpler the better.
Of course, I’m not an expert and maybe there’s some huge, glaring oversight I’m making. So if you know something I didn’t mention as to why this might not be viable, please let me know!
What should we do with produce stickers?
Until these little nuisances are banned, what should we be doing?
Most importantly, we should be making sure they end up in the trash headed to landfill. Most produce stickers are made of plastic and are therefore not biodegradable.
And, as discussed earlier, these little stickers can slide right through commercial compost screens, contaminating their end compost. Whether in commercial compost, home compost, or landfill, the stickers will eventually break down into microplastics and contaminate our water and air.
You should not eat these stickers. So many rumors have flown around that claim they’re edible. And while they won’t kill you if you eat one, they’re still made of plastic and adhesives and don’t offer any positives. None of us need more plastic in our diets.
Or, to avoid produce stickers altogether, we can shop locally at farmer’s markets to support them and get, usually, much better quality fruits and vegetables with a lot less waste.
A more creative use for them is to make collage art!
One of the produce-sticker-artists I came across is Barry Snyder. He picked up the hobby when he was a teenager, going to high school in Oshkosh, WI (had to give this little Wisconsin shoutout, it’s otherwise not important lol).
Here’s some of his work:
When asked why he chose this as his preferred medium, he said it’s not environmentalism or a budget issue as some people assume. He said it’s the, “pointlessness of the pointillism that intrigues him.”
The tagline he came up with for his work is: “It’s so stupid, it’s neat.”
And I truly love that tagline and his honesty for it.
Another collage-maker, Joan Davidson, makes mosaics out of produce stickers in an attempt to reduce waste.
Here’s a few glimpses into her work:
Joan says she composts almost everything and has very little waste but that produce stickers are incredibly hard to avoid. One day, she decided to reuse them to make greeting cards and her work has transformed from there.
She has entire reference books dedicated to each fruit and she stores all of her stickers in bins by type. I admire her dedication and organization in her endeavors so much!
I really thought this was going to be a short, concise post but here we are. I think that wraps up everything, though!
What do you think of produce stickers and the possible solutions to them? Any one that jumps out at you?
Or are you now inspired to make some collages from them? I might start a little collection to do that myself…
More sources not already linked/mentioned above:
Thanks so much for venturing into the Blue Raspberry Patch with me! I’ve enjoyed exploring these topics in longer form and sharing little berries of info with you all.
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Okay but the artwork/collage is FIRE :)
I didn't think I'd ever be reading whole ass articles about produce stickers but here I am haha and! enjoying it, so thank you. Don't worry about being concise. The days of IG caption character counts are overrrrrr
Really LOVE this one! My job is all about soil health and these little stickers do drive me crazy in the compost. The re-use as art is really great.