Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Colombian National Department of Planning shows that Colombians waste approximately 6.1 million tons of food annually, with fruits and vegetables accounting for 40% of this waste.
Among the reasons for the staggering amount of waste is the short life cycle of fruits and vegetables, caused by the common misconception that ripe produce is unusable.
To combat this attitude, Dutch-owned cash-and-carry wholesaler Makro and Grey Colombia, Bogotá, created stickers featuring recipe suggestions tailored to the degree of ripeness of fruits and vegetables. The Life Extending Stickers look just like usual branded stickers, except they mimic the colour of each food item at various points of its ripeness journey. For example, a banana’s sticker goes from green to yellow to brown and finally black, with a serving or cooking suggestion over each colour – in the banana’s case the copy reads (in order of ripeness) fried, ice cream, tempura, cupcake.
‘We wanted to generate a simple yet powerful change in people’s behaviour, to educate about responsible consumption of fruits and vegetables,’ Juan Yepes, marketing director at Makro Colombia told Contagious. ‘The insight was that when fruits and vegetables’ aspect isn’t “perfect”, that is the stage when they become more delicious, but people miss it for preconceived cosmetic reasons.’
The stickers launched in April 2023 and are in use in 22 Makro stores across Colombia during ‘Market Wednesdays and Sundays’. The campaign included a variety of recipes showcased on Makro’s Instagram account.
Results / The case study forecasts that the campaign will extend the average lifetime of fruit and veg by six more days, and create 70 tons less food waste a week (stores and homes combined). The campaign won a Gold in the Outdoor category at the 2023 Cannes Lions Festival.
