The life extending fruit stickers that redefine freshness
What unsustainable behavior needs to change:
Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Colombian National Department of Planning reveals a staggering amount of annual food waste of around 6.1 million tons in Colombia, with 40% of this waste attributed to fruits and vegetables.
Unfortunately, fruit is thrown away for a number of unnecessary reasons, cutting their life spans short. The mistaken idea that darkening, colour changing or texture softening means something is wrong continues this wasteful pattern. The bad habit of throwing away not perfectly looking fruit, passed down through generations, shows a long-lasting problem of humans creating food waste. It’s an unsustainable practice that urgently needs a big change.
The Green Nudge:
To counter this wasteful behaviour and promote longer life cycles, Dutch-owned wholesaler Makro, in collaboration with Grey Colombia, has introduced “Life Extending Stickers.”
This transformative solution is elegantly simple yet incredibly effective. By suggesting recipes based on ripeness and colour, particularly during the ripest stages that are often disregarded, the Life Extending Sticker prevents unnecessary waste.
Take the banana sticker as an illustration: it transitions from green to yellow, then to brown, and ultimately to black. At each stage, a serving or cooking idea accompanies the colour shift. For instance, as the banana ripens, the sticker displays suggestions in sequence: fried, ice cream, tempura, and cupcake.
Launched in April 2023, these stickers are now employed in 22 Makro stores across Colombia, being specifically effective during ‚Market Wednesdays and Sundays‘.
The result: the team behind the “Life Extending Stickers,” forecasts that the campaign will extend the average lifetime of fruit and veg by six more days, and create 70 tons less food waste a week (stores and homes combined).
Are you aware of any other nudges that help to get insights on energy consumption? Feel free to comment or get in touch: hello@green-nudges.com
From Juan Jose Posada who is Chief Creative Officer at Grey Colombia, an agency renowned for crafting ideas that are “Famously Effective”. They teamed up with cash-and-carry wholesaler Makro to fight the issue of food waste.
Small Plates, Big Impact: How Plate Size and Social Cues Affect Food Waste
What unsustainable behavior needs to change:
You may have seen videos of tourists frantically piling up food on their plates at hotel buffets. Unfortunately, this gluttonous behaviour contributes to the significant issue of food waste. Buffets are designed to offer a wide variety of options catering to different tastes and preferences. By design, the self-serve nature of buffets can lead to people taking more food than they can eat, as there are no portion control measures in place.
If people do not fill up their plates with as much food as possible, they might feel as though they’re losing out on the opportunity to try a variety of foods or getting their money’s worth. One potential psychological explanation for this behaviour is called “Loss aversion.”
Additionally, people may also experience social pressure or expectations to consume more food when surrounded by others who are overfilling their plates. This can lead to a sense of conformity or a “fear of missing out” if one doesn’t fill up their plate in the same way; thereby worsening the problem of food waste.
The Green Nudge:
Norwegian researchers Steffen Kallbekken & Håkon Sælen wanted to see if they could nudge hotel guests to waste less food by changing the way the food was presented. In two treatments, the researchers manipulated external cues to measure their impact on average food waste (in kg).
In the first treatment they reduced average plate size from 24 to 21 cm, combining a social cue (plate shape and size delineate norms for appropriate amounts of food to eat at a meal) with a visual illusion (smaller plate size can lead to biassed perceptions of how much food is consumed or served).
In the second treatment, they provided a more direct clue by displaying a sign at the buffet. It reads “Welcome back! Again! And again! Visit our buffett many times. That’s better than taking a lot at once.” This signal indicates that it is socially acceptable to serve yourself more than once.
The results were impressive. Reducing the plate size led to a 19.5% reduction in food waste, while the sign at the buffet led to a 20.5% reduction.
While the study has some limitations, such as a small sample size, the findings were supported by their own observational study and other studies that show how social influence or plate size can affect food behaviour.
From Selina Sinning who is a behavioural science enthusiast and co-founder of Sustainacy, a B2B platform promoting employee engagement in sustainability transformation. Combining insights from behavioural economics and gamification, she helps employees to make more sustainable decisions and form more sustainable habits. With that, she supports companies to improve their ESG reporting.