SINGAPORE: An unhappy Reddit user posted a photo of a single apple in a plastic bag, heading it with the words, “The irony.”
“I appreciate fairprice for selling “ugly” fruits at cheaper prices but…not like this with more plastic waste :(,” wrote u/pyongpebbles on Saturday (July 1) on r/Singapore.
In an effort to reduce food wastage, the supermarket chain started selling fruit with slight blemishes—sometimes known as “ugly” fruit— at a discount some years ago.
Commenters on the Reddit post also appeared to be dismayed at the packaging, given that many large grocery chains in Singapore will start charging for plastic bags by Monday (July 3), and plastic straws have all been but phased out.
One netizen, however, appeared resigned to the situation, writing, “Food waste and plastic waste has always been a trade off due to shelf life. It’s also easier to sell ugly fruits with more plastic when you can cut and wrap the nice parts. There isn’t much of a solution right now iirc.”
Another argued that this is actually done to prevent spoilage. “Ripe apples produce gas which ripen other fruit, therefore overly ripened fruit need to be packaged separately to prevent it from accelerating the spoiling process of the whole batch ie “one bad apple spoils the whole lot.”
One pointed out, however, that the price of the apple, $2, is quite high.
“The carbon footprint of the plastic should be much lower than letting the apple spoil faster and go to waste,” another observed.
“I suggest that they put a basket of those apples or other fruits beside the cashier and when a customer purchase more than a specific amount e.g. $20, the cashier give the customer a fruit. If $40, 2 fruits and so on,” another commenter said.
The Independent Singapore has reached out to NTUC Fairprice for comment. /TISG