Sponsored by
Naked truth about the supermarket cucumber
Is the naked cucumber a breakthrough for green consciousness or just another PR stunt? Chris Benfield reports.
The Co-op got good publicity for its decision to stop selling its cucumbers shrink-wrapped – claiming it would save eight tons of plastic a year.
Obviously, the Co-op was aware that customers wonder why it is necessary to put a wrapping on a product which already has a good one supplied by Nature.
There is, though, an answer to that question.
Derek Hargreaves, a Beverley-based horticulture consultant and technical officer of the Cucumber Growers Association, explained: "A tomato or an apple is called a climacteric fruit, which means there is a point at which it stops growing and will stay healthy for a reasonable length of time.
"A cucumber is non-climacteric, so it never stops trying to draw moisture from the stem end and lose moisture through the skin. 'Naked', it will stay good for two or three days after cutting, but you would not buy it after five days. Wrapped, it will stay good for a few weeks.
"You can slow the deterioration by cooling it but only up to a point. It's a subtropical fruit and easily frost-damaged.
"In the old days, if you bought a cucumber from a greengrocer, it was fresh off the vine. You'd be lucky to find that kind of greengrocer nowadays. The wholesale markets they went to every day have been destroyed.
"The supermarkets want everything centralised, and they want everything on their terms. If they buy 2,000 boxes of cucumbers and 500 go rotten, you get paid for 1,500. And I very much doubt that the Co-op will be offering a premium for naked cucumbers. This decision will not help the growers and it will not help the customers.
"They can say it helps the planet, by saving on plastic. But what you save in plastic, you are going to waste in food. And anyway, the shrink-wrapping is recyclable, anywhere that they recycle plastic bags. It's all the same material.
"But at the moment, it depends on your local council whether you can put it in your recycling bin. We should be more like Germany, where you take the packaging back to the supermarket and they have to deal with it."
There was also, Mr Hargreaves pointed out, a hygiene issue.
Growers made similar points.
Daniel Angadi, operations manager for cucumber and herbs specialist Humber VHB of Brough, near Hull, said there was no problem in supplying cucumbers unwrapped. The sandwich trade already wanted them that way, to save time.
As for wastage, it was a problem for the growers only up to delivery. Once the goods were through the doors, collapsing cucumbers were the supermarket's problem.
"However," he added, "we'd certainly get to hear about it if the losses were higher than expected."
They would also hear about it if there were a lot of customer complaints – and there would be, he added. Hardly anyone buys a cucumber and eats it all on the same day.
His colleague, Ian Ball, commented: "The Co-op is not the first to try this. Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, have all tried it and gone back to wrapping – not least because of customer complaints."
They added that wrapping made it easier to include a Grown In Britain label. Food miles might bother some customers more than plastic.
Mark Daisley, commercial manager of Produce Packaging of Kent, said: "The margin on a box of fruit is so small it can be knocked out by a couple of losses through damage. It all makes sense in terms of fractions of pennies."
John Davison, a greengrocer in Castleford Market Hall, gets his cucumbers from the wholesale market in Leeds every morning, and he said: "It must be five years since I saw a cucumber unwrapped. That's the way they come nowadays."
Everyone pointed out worse examples of over-packaging – including, it was alleged, shrink-wrapped swedes.
It was also pointed out that in order to put cucumbers on the shelf "naked", the Co-op would be keeping them in special long-life bags until the last minute.
What is the difference between the carbon footprint of those bags and that of the shrink-wrap plastic? The Co-op was still trying to answer that question last night.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Leeds lose Ward to Palace: Is there anyone they can afford now?
- Sheffield Wednesday leaving it late to hijack Leeds United over Ward
- As Snodgrass dithers over Leeds, Warnock throws a lifeline
- Ball is in Leeds United’s court over contract - Snodgrass
- Police turning blind eye to Asian voter fraud, says MP
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: East
