Why Are Organic Bananas Wrapped in Plastic?
February 20, 2008 · Print This Article
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]
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Just wanted to clarify that putting bananas in a plastic bag WILL NOT speed up their rippening process.
Plastic bags are used because the retailers need that everybody pays for the product that is buying. Many people take the stickers off of the organic bananas and claim that they are conventional at the cashier.
We do not make any money out of the plastic bags, we will love to avoid them, but consumers also need to help with this process. Ask your retailer to stop selling plastic bagged organic bananas.
We are also looking for other altenatives to avoid plastic bags in our products, but it takes time.
The comment about ethylene is just out of place, bananas are not BLASTED, since it is needed in a very small quantity, the ethylene used is not to ripe the bananas in an artificial way, the ethylene is used to start the natural ripening process, because bananas produces ethylene by themselves, so you only need a very small quantity to make it start. You can try… take a green banana put it togheter with an apple in a close space (it could be a bag, or any other recipient / container) and the ethylene produced by the apple will start the natural ripening process of the banana.
As extra information, most of the Ethylene gas used (which is exactly the same molecule than the natural Ethylene contained in the atmosphere) is produce using Ethanol and a catalitic box machine.
Kind regards,
Luis Monge
[...] Organic bananas are wrapped in plastic because it helps speed up the ripening process. Although all bananas are shipped in their unripened green state, conventional bananas get a quick spray of an ethylene gas to accelerate their transition from green to yellow. Understandably, the organic bananas are not gassed and are instead prepackaged in plastic bags. Since bananas naturally give off ethylene gas, the bags allow the fruit to soak up the gas and turn yellow on their own. Pretty clever, huh? Too bad about the excess plastic though. Posted in Diet / Health on Jul 23rd, 2008, 7:02 am [...]
[...] Organic bananas are wrapped in plastic because it helps speed up the ripening process. Although all bananas are shipped in their unripened green state, conventional bananas get a quick spray of an ethylene gas to accelerate their transition from green to yellow. Understandably, the organic bananas are not gassed and are instead prepackaged in plastic bags. Since bananas naturally give off ethylene gas, the bags allow the fruit to soak up the gas and turn yellow on their own. Pretty clever, huh? Too bad about the excess plastic though. Posted in Exercise on Jul 23rd, 2008, 7:03 am [...]