One supermarket in Thailand has made waves online for using banana leaves to package its vegetable produce.
The vegetable section of Rimping Supermarket in Chiang Mai has gone viral after being featured in a Facebook post of real estate company Perfect Home last March 21.
The post has garnered over 6,200 likes and 15,800 shares as of writing, with some netizens tagging their own local supermarkets to follow suit.
One Bianca Christine Cottle tagged Australian supermarkets Coles and Woolsworths to take note of the concept: “Some great ideas on how to wrap #plasticfreeproduce. Could this be suitable for your organic lines?”
Facebook users also saw room for improvement in the grocery, with some noting that there appeared to be plastic behind the banana leaves on the cucumbers. Another said it looked like scotch tape to hold the leaves together.
The use of banana leaves as packaging is far from new, with Filipinos and other Asians using them for cooking, eating and wrapping food. Besides being biodegradable, banana leaves have other benefits, such as adding flavor and an artistic touch to food.
The Philippines and Thailand are some of the world’s top plastic polluters, as per Greenpeace. Philippine local governments have taken steps to reduce plastic waste with bans on materials such as plastic bags, plastic bottles and plastic utensils. It seems another step which could be taken is to look at materials readily available in the country to find alternatives to plastic. JB
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