2y ago

In South Korea, some stores carry "one a day" bananas which are packaged in order of ripeness

76 comments

Fantastic idea, but did they need to use plastic packaging?
- of course, because you’re not allowed to have perfect.
- Plus the waste of the all the bananas that don’t look perfectly the same
- They even wrap single apples in plastic in Korea. The environmental thinking is slowly adapting though.

I mean, that is mildly interesting, but it's so fucking silly. So unnecessary...
- Seriously... Just pick the exact ripeness of each one in any store where I live. Mix and match, it's totally, 100% socially acceptable to do this.
  
  You can't buy individual bananas in many places in my country.
  I'm not buying three bunches of bananas, each at different stages of ripeness. That's a ridiculous amount of bananas.
- [mildly infuriating]
  putting bannas in a plastic shell 🗽🇺🇸👍👍😎
  
  Except… it’s South Korea 🤷🇰🇷👍👍🤗

Ban single use plastics already.
- That's literally the first thing I thought of while looking at that picture. There's no good reason for this. Bananas serve many purposes from green to yellow to black. Moreover, that "one per day" gimmick won't even give you the same ripeness.
- Some places individually wrap their carrots too it's the dumbest shit

You can do the same in some stores. They put out some ripe and some unripe. Just grab a couple of each. And don't fall for the guilt of breaking up bunches. You are allowed to do that. You don't have to buy the whole bunch. Unless you go to a store that unnecessarily puts then in plastic containers/wraps.
And you can still rinse the banana off to get rid of any germs from inside the store if that's the fear. It won't damage it. But do it when you are ready to eat it otherwise if you use mild soap it can reduce the life of the banana by making the skin less protective.
- Washing a banana? Ive never do e that. And I eat a lot of bananas.
  
  Only because I like to avoid getting herbicides and pesticides on my hands which then might touch the banana flesh when pulling out the last part. I don't use soap, but some do. I rinse all of my fruits and veggies when possible even if I remove the peel.
- You can't buy individual bananas in many places in my country. They're usually sold but the bunch.
  Which would mean I'd need to buy multiple bunches which is just a ridiculous amount of bananas.

People stop buying shit wrapped in plastic. Once you stop , businesses will stop.

Incredibly wasteful

I can't tell which banana is for scale. Plaese halp

Just buy bananas that are of the ripeness you like and put them in the fridge. They'll easily last a week or two and tastes better too (my opinion). Don't worry if the shell turns brown, the insides are still good. Place them in some kind of container (plastic bag will do) when you store them in fridge and they'll probably last a month if not more (I wouldn't know, I always eat them sooner).
When storing in fridge, the low temperature slows down ripening but oxygen causes the shell to turn brown. When the shell is brown enough it will start to ruin the insides. The plastic bag, or other airtight or near airtight container, reduces the amount of oxygen that gets to the bananas. When there's less oxygen to turn the shell brown the bananas will last who knows how long. In room temperature the shell and the insides will ripen about at the same rate, and usually pretty fast.
- This is what I do. People have gotten so used to commercially produced unripe fruit that they get turned off by actually ripe fruit. I had a friend think my bananas were going off because they smelled what a ripe banana is supposed to for the first time in their life. This person was 34 years old.

because we all know that the banana does not already grow in the perfect packaging.

I desperately need them to swap positions of the two bananas on the left.
- I need them to flip the whole thing. Green bananas are best bananas, and you use the ones that have overripened in your chartreuse-fueled negligence to hastily make banana bread in an effort to excuse yourself. Repeat forever.
  
  Then you would LOVE the grocery store were I live. You can choose between green, green and green bananas, I haven't seen them sell a even slightly yellow one for years, even the greenest one here is to yellow.
  
  Have you ever had the chance to try plantains? They're a bit like bananas but for cooking and while they can be used yellow, generally they are used green.

Now that is freaking cool.

In North Korea, one store carry “one a year” bananas which is packed in order of “loyalty to the leader points”

Capitalism breeds innovation
- And plastic waste.

so it's a yeah-na-na-na-na-na-na banana?

Nice

This is a great idea

Fantastic idea, although doesn't seem to compensate their 69h week work

We need this in north america
- No, we don't. Just buy a damn bunch of bananas and skip the added plastic.
  
  One thing that shocked me about living in Asia was the amount of plastic and individually wrapped fruit...sometimes double or triple-packaged.
  You will even occasionally buy a pack of Oreos and inside the package, each Oreo is individually wrapped. I don't know why it's so normal to use so much plastic.
  This was in Singapore btw - the country that's supposed to be 'green' by 2030.
  When Singapore announced it would be getting rid of one-use plastic bags, there was a huge uproar. My colleagues at the time would ask how they are supposed to carry groceries back home. When I mentioned they can bring a reusable bag, they were like "It's so much trouble to carry bags to the store when they can just provide them!"
  Of course, not everyone had this mentality, but the people against this new policy pretty much said the same word for word.
  Not to mention, there are ZERO composting programs in Singapore. Maybe you can find one mom-and-pop shop that has a compost box where you can bring your waste, but again - most people don't drive, and bringing your trash on public transport definitely won't fly.
  I hope they reach the green goal by 2030, but they have a LOT of work to do in the next 6.5 years...
  
  I didn't mean the plastics I just meant being able to buy bananas of varying ripeness
  
  The plastic is not an essential part of this product.
- I normally find there are plenty of green and yellow bananas. Grab a few of each and just eat them in slightly non-optimal ripeness. I don't think you can really gauge a bananas ripeness down to the day anyway.
  
  Yeah, this is true. I feel like those would all ripen at about the same time. You can guess pretty well, but they often seem to ripen together.
  Also, they didn't wrap the stem. Those will ripen quickly, now.
  
  I wonder if they might actually be combining them from different deliveries. IE, they grab an average ripeness one from the Monday delivery, an average ripeness one from the Tuesday delivery etc and by the time the last delivery is added the first one is about ready to eat.

76 comments