British supermarket chain Tesco has launched a new initiative aimed at minimizing food waste, according to Glasgow Live.
Specially marked bananas will be sold greener than they had been previously in an attempt to encourage shoppers to let them ripen at home.
The hope is that this will lead to fewer bananas spoiling before shoppers have a chance to eat them.
Data suggests the United Kingdom wastes 1 million bananas every day, largely due to their immense popularity.
"Bananas have never been more popular on account of their nutritional qualities and versatility in cooking, baking and in making smoothies and milkshakes," said Tesco's Dan Bentley. "In the last year we have seen demand soar with nearly 15 million more sold than the previous year."
When food goes to landfill, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas that exacerbates increasingly destructive weather patterns. These can include droughts and floods, which disrupt agriculture globally and, in turn, raise grocery prices.
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The heat captured by methane also contributes to melting polar ice caps, which raises sea levels and threatens coastal communities.
Diverting food waste to composting at home is a great solution when all else fails. Food comprises roughly 24% of waste that goes to landfills in America. That organic matter would be much better suited to improving soil health and reducing methane pollution through composting.
Tesco has a multifaceted approach to tackling sustainability issues, ranging from offering discounts on older baked goods to using recycled plastic in packaging and laser-etching avocados. Tesco's recent adjustment for bananas should add four days to their shelf life.
"We know that bananas can ripen quickly so we hope that by offering customers an added longer shelf-life option it will allow them to buy accordingly for the week ahead and hopefully help them cut down on wastage at home," said Bentley.
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