Board Clouse Up Supporting Images CMYK 7063px5008px

Life Extending Stickers

Reducing food waste by making fruits & vegetables live longer

Office: Colombia

Client: Makro

Simple stickers that help extend the lifespan of fruit and vegetables to prevent waste.

When it comes to fruits and vegetables in a supermarket, food waste is an imminent problem. Their lifecycles are cut short for cosmetic reasons by a preconceived idea that ripe is wrong. Makro supermarkets decided to step up the game in retail history by extending their lives with the Life Extending Stickers.

We wanted to generate a simple yet powerful change in people’s behavior to educate them about the responsible consumption of fruits and vegetables. The insight was that when fruits and vegetables aren't 'perfect,' that is the stage when they become more delicious, but people miss them for preconceived cosmetic reasons.

Juan Yepes Marketing Director - Makro Colombia

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the National Department of Planning, in Colombia alone, 6.1 million tons of food are wasted annually, and 40% are fruits and vegetables. As an answer to this problem, Makro Supermarkets, under their sustainability pillar, set an objective to help at their stores and educate consumers on preventing food waste cheaply and easily in 22 of its shops.

We used a media that has existed for decades in the fruit and vegetable industry: The Fruit Sticker. We gave it a real purpose: To prevent food waste by extending their life cycles and suggesting recipes based on the fruit's ripeness and color, especially in their most ripe stages when people avoid their consumption for cosmetic reasons.

That’s why we created the Life Extending Stickers. Printed in its traditional size of 2.7 mm, in biodegradable material and ecological ink, with no need for technology, only the help of colors, we showed Colombians an easy way to use their fruits and vegetables from beginning to end. Makro gave Colombians an anti-waste tool that helps them save money because preventing food waste helps save cash.

We increased the consumption of fruits and vegetables with stickers, as people now know how to prepare them.