The Green Room

Packaging that prevents waste

By Walmart Green Room on September 16, 2012 Leave a comment

With the recent kickoff of football season comes tailgates and football parties with friends and family. One of the most popular snacks during this time of year? Guacamole. In fact, today is National Guacamole Day! Yet, preparing it from scratch can sometimes be difficult because avocados are a tricky fruit to pick out. To make good guacamole, the avocados need to have just the right level of ripeness, and it can be difficult to match that ripeness with the exact day you need to use the avocado for your recipe. As a result, many overripe avocados go to waste.

Our U.K. partner Asda is trying to control this food waste with a new packaging concept for avocados. The pilot program features color-coded packaging indicating the state of ripeness: green packs are ready to eat now, orange indicates they are close to ripening, and those in pink packages will need several days to ripen.

It may seem odd to add packaging when the goal is a more sustainable business, but eliminating food waste is actually a big part of sustainability. And it fits into our overall goal of reducing waste. And the avocado packaging isn’t Asda’s first foray into food waste reduction – it already sends zero food waste to landfills.

You can read more about Asda’s avocado packaging solution here.