Why Are Organic Bananas Wrapped in Plastic?

I’ve been happy to see organic bananas start to pop up in mainstream grocery stores over the past few years but always put off by the fact that most of them were sold in plastic bags. Energy Refuge asks:

I only have one question for Dole, the grower of my organic bananas. Why do you wrap each bunch of bananas in thick plastic?

I’m happy to pay the few cents more for no fertilizer, no herbicides, no insecticides. I am not happy to pay for the plastic around each bunch. I can understand that the grocery stores across the country do not want their checkout people accidentally charging non-organic prices for organic goods. I can understand not giving customers the ability to tear off part of a bunch and buy just a few.

Organic bananas are wrapped in plastic because it helps speed up their ripening. All bananas are shipped green, conventional bananas take a quick stop in a room where they are blasted with a Ethylene Gas to hastens their transition from green to yellow. The organic bananas skip the gassing and are packaged in plastic bags where they naturally give off and bathe in the Ethylene.

Link [Energy Refuge]