Pre-Peeled Bananas Cause Controversy
Have you ever found yourself craving a banana, but decided against eating one for fear that the sheer effort involved in removing the peel might leave you bedridden for the rest of the day? Are you so busy that taking the time to remove a banana peel would throw off your schedule for weeks? German-owned, Austra-based supermarket Billa has a “common sense” solution for you: pre-peeled bananas.
It’s simple: Billa removes the peels for you, and then repackages the naked bananas in a Styrofoam tray covered in plastic wrap. All you, the busy consumer, has to do is remove the plastic covering and voila! Fresh, pre-peeled bananas that will rapidly go bad unless you eat them all at once or wrap them in even more plastic!
When Billa posted a picture of this exciting innovation on their Facebook page, word (and accompanying displeasure) spread quickly. Billa was subjected to a torrent of outrage in the form of sarcastic, incredulous, and sad Tweets and Facebook comments.
Billa quickly realized that they had made a mistake and pulled the product from the shelves. They also shut down their Facebook page amid the controversy and promised that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen again.
What do you think? Are pre-peeled bananas a helpful innovation, or unbelievably wasteful? And are we making too big of a deal about this? After all, pre-peeled bananas are far from the only food that’s wastefully packaged.
