Some markets that use signs also use a dot or two from a colored pen on the differently priced avocados (organic, large, etc.) to distinguish them at checkout.
This thread seems to be populated by competent people. I would like everyone to step back for a moment however and consider how many incompetent people exist.
Think about self-serve checkouts, and how despite items being clearly labeled and the machines having item lookups, people still struggle constantly. Now imagine how many more people would struggle without the label.
Think about the employee wrangling the self checkout dealing with increased frustrated customers. Think about how fickle customers can be, throwing up their hands at a minor obstacle and deciding to just buy avocados from now on from the store across the street that still uses stickers. You know these people exist. You know they exist in number. So do markets, so the laser etching is mitigating the problems they’ll have from removing stickers.
I get where you’re coming from but I’ll just say most fruits and vegetables already don’t have any stickers on them here (Canada) and people have been surviving fine. The only time I see a sticker is when it’s bundled in a pack.
If someone struggle that much he usually goes to a cashier instead of the self-checkout.
Many people forget that a store can have two types of avocados priced differently that then needs to be distinguished from one another at the checkout. It could for example be organic Vs conventional. Or for apples there are many different types that can all look the same. I find this type of tech pretty cool. I would love to see variations of it. Maybe editable wax ink or something like that
Around here we just have little stickers on the produce with a code number on it. Most produce is just stacked with no packaging. You collect as many as you want in a bag. At the check out, the little code number can be used tell what the exact variety is.
This seems a lot simpler than lazer etching to me, but idk, maybe that is really cheap and easy too?
It’s also about the fear of people just moving stickers around. I personally think it’s probably only a very small amount of people who would actually do that so the cost of preventing that is not worth it.
I can inform you that laser edging is much cheaper and way faster than stickers. Lasers are cheap and you don’t have any consumables you need to keep buying like stickers.
Omg I guess I’ve been tricked. I had read that they were mostly in at least the US but now can’t find any evidence to support that. Gotta do my homework better I guess.
Yeah I was googling around and as far as I could tell they must not be harmful if accidentally consumed, but I think can still be made of plastic (which is…weird), and don’t need to be compostable:
I believe this has been tried, but is difficult to do with most produce because the shape changes as the fruit ages on the shelf, making the barcodes unusable.
Eh… I dunno. You’d be comparing the power consumption of the laser etching machine to the energy cost of shipping oil to make the plastic to make the label, shipping the raw plastic to a facility to actually print the labels, making the adhesive, then (probably) shipping the labels and adhesive to the packing plant and then adding in the power of the machinery to that actually sticks the label on.
I have no real numbers here but I could see zapping a avocado with a laser being the more energy efficient one.
What label? I literally have not seen any sort of stickers on fruits & veggies in years. I only see packaging on softer produce that's prone to damage, quick to dry out, or harder to carry due to size. But again, it's an avocado.
God I hate those. They constantly end up in the compost despite my best efforts. God only knows how many of them are part of the soil in my garden now.
They use this technique for a while now to mark organic fruit and veg in my (german) supermarket. Where they used packaging previously to distinguish them from regular, cheaper produce, they can omit that now. I like it.
I feel like other grocers have already solved this problem by just not putting barcodes on the produce at all, and having the item manually punched in at the register while it’s on a scale (if it’s sold by weight and not per item).
It happens to cucumbers relatively often but other veggies are just so weirdly shaped from a packaging standpoint that I don’t think they see it as worthwhile
I dunno. Supermarkets near where I live sell avocados individually out of a big plastic tub under a sign saying AVOCADOS in case you can’t tell by looking.
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