Niki Bezzant: Naked as the day they were grown

Fruit and veg at some Countdown stores is refreshingly plastic-free.

Opinion

The other day I stood in the middle of a supermarket produce department that looked more like a farmers' market. Piles of cucumbers, free of plastic sleeves, sat beside vivid green unbagged lettuces; tomatoes glowed from paper bags and potatoes and onions nestled in brown paper and cardboard. It all looked hugely appealing.

This is part of a plastic reduction trial being undertaken by Countdown in three of its supermarkets for the next 10 weeks. It involves removing more than a tonne of plastic from fruit and vegetables, including the familiar rolls of plastic produce bags.

It means customers will need to bring their own produce bags, buy mesh re-usable fabric bags in store, or simply put their produce loose into their trolleys.

It's going to be fascinating to see how this goes. On its first morning in the Ponsonby store, customers I observed seemed mostly delighted, although one man did seem confused by open boxes of beans instead of bagged lots. He picked through the boxes selecting some from each, as if they were being sold by weight. Clearly a bit of guidance will help customers understand the change.

It will also be interesting to see whether it results in more food waste – something Countdown says it's monitoring closely, since it doesn't make sense to replace one problem with another – and indeed, food theft. With open cardboard punnets of strawberries and tomatoes I can see there could be a temptation to top up your pack with a few extras from another. Let's hope customers embrace it in good faith.

I think this is a change whose time has come. After all, it was only a year or so ago that we were all using single-use plastic bags. Now it's become so habitual to carry our own bags, it's hard to remember the plastic. Surely this is the logical next step, ideally to be followed by a reduction in plastic packaging across the rest of the supermarket.

A promising signal is that "naked" produce is already being successfully done in some New World supermarkets. Foodstuffs says its "Food in the Nude" low-plastic produce sections - created in 2017 by Nigel Bond, owner operator of New World Bishopdale in Christchurch – is now in place in 36 stores, mostly in the South Island. The scheme has resulted in significant reductions in plastic being produced for these stores; Foodstuffs reports it has eliminated three tonnes of plastic sleeves from its Pams-branded celery, silver beet, spring onions and spinach alone. The company has also been working to come up with solutions to problems, such as compostable wood-fibre netting bags for onions, garlic and citrus. And customers love it.

Let's fast-forward a year in our imaginations. How amazing would it be to see every supermarket in the country using minimal plastic for its produce? I reckon there's a potential cool healthy side benefit too: because it looks so great, we might also eat more vegetables and fruit. As shoppers, we have the power to make this happen.