Pesky, obnoxious, troublesome flexo fruit labels

As I climbed a staircase yesterday, I noticed a fruit label stuck to the concrete step. It’s holding-on despite the traffic of hundreds – perhaps thousands – of footsteps that cross over it daily.

These pesky labels are everywhere – in our sewage systems, in our recycling systems, in our wastewater, in our composting systems, in our drains and dishwashers and on our staircases – and of course, they are on the fruit in the grocery store.

I was talking last month to a landscape architect in Berkeley, CA (who happens to be my sister) and she mentioned that the East Bay Regional Municipal Utility District (called East Bay MUD by the locals) spends thousands of dollars unsticking pipes and drains and filters that are clogged by these little stickers. Curiously it’s not big stickers that get stuck, it’s the miniscule and seemingly harmless fruit labels that we peel off of the apple (just after we have bitten into one).

The labels, my sister tells me, are also showing up in compost – compost that has been through the natural fermenting processes, been sifted and ground-up for commercial sale. Nothing else shows up in compost – except beautiful rich organic matter – and fruit labels (an occasional plastic netting from sod farms).

In the grocery store, the little stickers save the cashier from having to look up the price of pippins, or the cost of corn. They don’t have to slow down the process of putting – beep – things – beep – in front – beep – of – beep – the UPC – beep – scanner. That’s a good thing because it keeps the lines of retail grocery sales moving.

But, we in the printing industry need to know that we are contributing to the darker side of the waste cycle. We are so careful to print on FSC-certified paper (and we can track it from one red-outlined square on the shop floor to the next). We purchase recycled paper whenever we can (and we brag about it), and we point with pride to the fact that we have reduced the load of VOCs that are put into the air in our plants. Yet, we produce one of the most destructive little ornaments used by society, and we think that we’re doing good.

We’re not.

How can we fix this? Can those labels be printed on a material that will degrade, dissolve or disappear? Can we make a product that both sticks to the oranges and pomegranates but doesn’t stick to the filter down at the local wastewater plant?

Most of these labels are printed on plastics – not paper, and the adhesives are by definition, intensely sticky. Can our industry print on paper labels instead? Can we use a different method to get the labels onto the produce? I don’t know the answer, but I am asking for answers. I would appreciate your input on this one.

We need to educate ourselves to the harm that these seemingly insignificant plastic stickers are causing, and we need to change the product in some way that it doesn’t cost municipalities and others a lot of trouble and money. The savings at the cash register is wasted if we cause massive trouble downstream with these “convenient” labels.

Price check on Aisle Three! Can you tell me the price of a Pippin label being removed from a filter in the storm drain at Sixth and Grand?