Billions of fruit stickers go into the environment every year and now three 18-year-old tertiary students have a new idea that has industry excited.
The Bayuble team comprises three 2018 graduates of Woodford House – Maggie Peacock, Sarah Wixon and Zoe Rookes – who decided to extensively research and solve a sticky plastic problem in the fruit industry.
Their creation – the Uble – is a plastic-free, biodegradable, warm water-soluble alternative to the plastic fruit sticker.
“We wanted to help solve a big issue in our community,” Wixon said.
“Our product is warm water-soluble so it encourages people to wash their fruit.
“It’s home compostable so it doesn’t require any high-tech equipment for it to be biodegradable and it’s made of natural ingredients so it’s edible, of course.
“It can also withstand supermarket misters.”
Fruit stickers might seem useless at first glance but are important, containing a price look-up number so the fruit is easily identified by checkout staff. In New Zealand the pesky little stickers have been made of plastic for almost 70 years.
“No one had been offering solutions,” Peacock said.
They hope their plastic-free, biodegradable sticker will revolutionise how fruit is labelled.
“We have been in touch with intellectual property lawyers and patent attorneys. Hopefully, we can get that fast-tracked so we can keep our idea safe,” Wixon said.
And while the make-up of their material is a trade secret what the students can reveal is the label is 100% natural and made from an apple byproduct.
“Because it’s a 100% natural product it will just be going into the water stream. It doesn’t affect anything at all,” Peacock said.
The NZ apple industry remains extremely competitive, according to the latest Fresh Facts report from Plant and Food Research.
Apple exports rose to $732.9 million in 2018 from $691m in 2017.
Hawke’s Bay alone exports 2.4 billion apples a year, making the little labels add up to a big environmental problem.
“That’s a lot of fruit stickers,” Rookes said.
“And most of the time they’re ending up in the ocean, in landfills or in compost bins so just don’t go away.”
Wixon said for something that seems so insignificant many people underestimate the impact it actually has on the environment.
“This problem doesn’t only affect the apple industry; it affects all other fruits.”
Traditional compostable stickers are available but they will not compost in backyard operations, only in commercial composts and growers do not like them because they cost 30% more.
However, the Uble has no lasting impact on the environment whatsoever, Uble said.
The prototype is already making waves in the industry with some keen to help develop the idea.
The concept helped the Bayuble team win the Hawke’s Bay region’s 2018 Young Enterprise Scheme award.
Meanwhile, in October, they received the Fourneau Award at the Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers’ Association industry awards evening. And in April, the group shared their idea with more than 600 people at the Boma Grow 2019 Agri-Summit in Christchurch.
Pipfruit NZ chief executive Alan Pollard thinks the water-soluble labels will be quite a popular idea among consumers.
“We are certainly getting feedback from our markets and from consumers that they would like to see a more sustainable solution to labelling and this is a great idea to go with it,” Pollard said.
Now the trio are studying at universities around the country but their effort to commercialise their prototype is far from over.
“It’s definitely a challenge trying to balance being full-time university students with doing this part-time but it’s something that we’re genuinely so passionate about,” Wixon said.
“There wouldn’t really be anything that would stop us from doing it and doing it to the very best of our abilities.
“We’re looking at plenty of options for our prototype and how to take it further. Our main goal is to get it into supermarkets and on every piece of fruit.”
