No more plastic fruit or vegetable stickers for NZ produce

Dear Mike Chapman,

Please say no to plastic fruit and vegetable stickers. Please inform your New Zealand fruit and vegetable suppliers to use bio-available materials for fruit stickers / laser printing / heat printing or whatever environmentally friendly non-plastic marking alternative is best suited to their produce. In 2005 a possible alternative was raised.* Other alternatives are also now available and being used commercially.^

Exercise your ability as a leader. Set a standard for NZ fruit and vegetable suppliers, and also send a message to the world that NZ is truely clean and green. Just because country of origin labelling was supported in a NZ survey** in 2017 does not mean people support plastic labels. Please declare a date from which plastic will no longer be on our NZ fruit and vegetables.

Commercially compostable stickers are not the solution. Stickers must be domestically compostable, if any sticker at all is used. There are non-plastic and non-sticker solutions, and we are a country proud of finding solutions.

Thank you,
From people who care about Aotearoa