Produce Stickers Are the Glitter Bombs of the Compost World
How long would you put up with this in your house? NOTE: Adam and Sean were housemates for 2+ years… but those weren’t Sean’s “fruit eating” years.
I have developed a habit – that some people who live with me would kindly describe as ‘frustrating’ – of keeping produce stickers after I remove them from a piece of fruit. Quite logically, I simply re-apply the produce sticker to the nearest surface available (this includes the faucet, sides of the sink, counter, and more recently whatever (obviously refillable) cleaner/soap bottle rests near the kitchen sink).
This (admittedly possibly frustrating) habit provides me a visual reminder of a waste item I find very challenging to reduce: produce stickers.
I had an opportunity some years ago to tour a large municipality’s Green Bin processing facility, where carrot peelings, apple cores, uneaten leftovers and otherwise wasted food go to meet the magical fairies who turn that waste into compost. By the time we reached the final pile, I was amazed by the efficiency and effectiveness of the process, but also left with one indelible image in my mind: over a half acre of finished compost, that seemed to legitimately sparkle with colourful, tiny circles. But it wasn’t glitter: it was the ubiquitous (unsolvable?) produce sticker.
This video from the City of Hamilton reminds residents to remove stickers and other plastics from their Green Bin waste
In 2020, Municipal Green Bin programs have nearly perfected turning your household food waste into a healthy, restorative soil amendment, and the compost Green Bin programs produce can be used right in your backyard. But today, and when I visited, produce stickers are a challenging and expensive contaminant that needs to be removed from the finished compost of all municipal programs.
Sometimes I’m lucky and find a local grocer who has produce without stickers. Our family does subscribe to a Community Shared Agriculture project, but it doesn’t feed us completely (it only runs during harvest season). Mostly, I’m forgetful, and inertia keeps me in my regular shopping routine.
Here are some of my tips for trying to reduce produce stickers:
Shop at farmers’ markets (like the Gravenhurst Farmers’ Market) or support community shared agriculture projects (like Eat Local Muskoka), where produce comes directly from the farmer.
Look for zero-waste grocers who may stock produce sans stickers.
Support small, local stores and ask them kindly to not stock stickered produce (or even just not apply their own stickers) – small businesses are often very responsive to things their customers ask for!
(NOTE: GREENish knows it can be very challenging for any independent grocer to source fresh produce without stickers. We’d like to challenge the larger chain stores – Sobeys, Loblaws, Metro, Wal-mart, etc. – to find innovative ways to sell produce without stickers.)
In the meantime, always remember to remove the produce stickers from fruit or veggies before placing them in your municipal Green Bin program (yes, even the gross spoiled stuff you forgot about!). It’s the GREENish thing to do.
Do you have tips for Sean on how to reduce produce stickers? Drop him a note at: sean@greenishcan.com.
-SH
ADDITIONAL READING, IF THAT’S YOUR THING:
-Mary Harrington, Biocycle, July 2015
“...I see a fleck of white, and bend down to pick it up. An apple sticker — one of those small plastic labels showing the fruit’s trademark. When I show it to Phil, he says they’re one of the few bits of contamination that still gets through. But they’re inert and harmless. The Australian Standards require contamination levels in commercially-sold compost below 0.05%, and here it’s less than 0.02%. Nonetheless, I make a mental note to myself to always peel off the fruit labels from now on...”
-Nick Taylor, Pedallingforwards.com, July 2019