EUGENE, Ore. — A University of Oregon business professor is on a mission to get barcode stickers on produce banned at the grocery store.
She’s using artwork, made of those labels, to get people talking about the issue of hidden plastics in places we don’t expect.
University of Oregon marketing professor T. Battina Cornwell thought — if a picture is worth a thousand words, what better way to get people to start talking about the dangers of plastics than art made of plastic.
“A lot of the stickers are indeed plastic and a lot of people don't know that,” said Cornwell.
The professor from the University of Oregon's Lundquist College of Business is spreading the word to explain how plastics get into our compost and possibly our food.
“The plastic stickers on fruit and vegetables are not good for you and shouldn't go into your composting stream.”
France banned plastic barcodes on fruit for health reasons — and several other countries are doing the same.
“It's not an industry requirement, or federal requirement,” said Cornwell. “It's an industry convenience.”
She says her mosaic artwork made from labels collected by her family received a lot of attention at a recent consumer research conference in Paris.
Cornwell said it inspires shoppers to think about waste in their own lives.
“It's one of those plastics like the windows of an envelope that you…destroy, or the pasta box with the piece of plastic in the window you don't know what to do with."
Just getting people talking about plastics — is the aim.
“If we can bring attention to this, perhaps the system can change.”
