A farm in Essex County has found a way to keep its produce fresh while cutting down on plastic waste.
To preserve freshness, almost all grocery store cucumbers are wrapped in plastic.
Some are packaged in threes and wrapped in plastic again.
Topline Farms is looking to change that, after one of their biggest customers tasked them with finding a way to eliminate single-use plastic.
“You need to wrap it in plastic because if not, you would have only a day or two to use that product, and then it would be flimsy,” said Dino Di Laudo, vice-president of sales and marketing at Topline Farms.
Apeel Sciences has developed a spray that can keep the cucumbers fresh from the farm to the table without the need for plastic wrapping.
“It’s a plant-based product, it’s completely edible and has no flavour, no flavour components, no nothing, it’s just basically adding another skin to the cucumber,” said Di Laudo.
According to Apeel, the non-GMO product locks in moisture while keeping out oxygen to keep cucumber fresher for longer.
“We've actually found that the Apeel treated cucumbers actually last a little bit longer than the plastic-coated cucumbers,” said Di Laudo.
The three packs are now banded in paper, and the grocery store sticker is also non-plastic
“We're not sacrificing the quality of the cucumber [or] the shelf life of the cucumber,” said Di Laudo. “We’re going to be putting out something that’s good for the environment.”
Topline estimates each load of plastic-free cucumbers delivered by a transport truck is the equivalent of removing 100,000 plastic straws from the environment.
Topline’s plastic-free cucumbers are being piloted in a major chain in the Greater Toronto Area.
“I'm hopeful that within two or three years that this will be the norm for cucumbers,” said Di Laudo.
Farms in Ontario grow 65 per cent of the country's cucumber crop, with the most popular variety being the English cucumber.
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