Image Credit Del Monte
“Bananas come in the perfect package already, a disposable, compostable skin that doubles as a handy banana holder. But that's not good enough for Del Monte, which introduces individually wrapped bananas as a “Natural Energy Snack on the Go.” And what were they before? According to the Daily Mail, there is method in this madness; while the trial may seem bizarre at a time when big businesses are under pressure to reduce packaging waste, Del Monte insists the addition of a clear plastic bag is actually a green measure. The company claims that the bag contains ‘Controlled Ripening Technology’ which extends the shelf-life of the banana by up to six days. The banana is put into the plastic bag when it is green and, according to the manufacturers, goes on to ripen more slowly than if it had been left in the open air. Environmentalists are outraged at the unnecessary packaging, noting that "Nature has designed out the need for bananas to have extra packaging, “but the company is challenging that it is better.” James Harvey, Del Monte's UK managing director, told the Fresh Produce Journal, “Del Monte's new CRT packaging is designed to provide significant carbon footprint savings by reducing the frequency of deliveries and the amount of waste going to landfill. The packaging is also recyclable.” Reduced carbon footprint? Recyclable? How these words have become insulted.” - Lloyd Alter
Similar to this article is this video, Atheist Nightmare,
This video explains that God has made the perfect banana for humans, every characteristic of the banana clearly acknowledge that the purpose for the banana was for humans to eat. But everyone does not know and even I did not know that humans have taken the “real banana” and chemically alter the DNA of this banana so that the bananas we eat do not produce large non-edible seeds. The banana we know today is man-made.
Now the banana producers want to give the banana a “second skin”. Eventually the future generations will grow up with their bananas in plastic bags. This is a perfect example in explaining Cronon “The Trouble with Wilderness” and Leopold “Land Ethic”.
In Cronon, first we find meaning to what he means by “the trouble with wilderness”, at a glimpse the first thing that pops into the mind is trouble? What is wrong, are we doing something wrong? But we must ask ourselves this question what is wilderness? For my perspective wilderness is a grand forest, an area where no humans have interfere with the wildlife, it is untouched by man. And this is the perspective for many humans, but Cronon gives another side that no one has really taken into consideration. Cronon say wilderness is the tree in your backyard, the grass that grows between the cracks of the sidewalk. Basically if it’s natural then its wilderness, then we must ask ourselves what is natural? We have two sides, we have Pincho that believes in modernism and then we have Muir that supports Romanticism. Both sides have their own definition to what is natural. Pincho argues on anthropometric, which is regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence. Also he has instrumental reason which is a specific form of rationality that focuses on efficient means to achieve an end. While on the other hand Muir focuses on ecocentrism; which recognizes the ecosphere rather than the biosphere, as the center of importance, and attempts to readdress the imbalance which is created by anthropocentrism. Muir explores the beauty and experience of nature rather than focus on masculinity. Pincho was imposed that nature was only for the elite white Christian “American” males with landowning rights. The wilderness should be conserved so that men can go out and experience hunting and the joys of the wild because this knowledge made them manlier. Who was right?
The real trouble with wilderness is that it is nothing but a social construction, it is our own perspective. It is the crisis of how we see the world, a crisis of our own perspective. I have grown up going to the supermarket and picking bananas off the display without them being individual wrapped. During that time that was considered normal but now that the CEO of Del Monte believes that bananas should be individual wrap. By doing so their freshness will be preserved and this new wrapping is for the greater good, what should we believe? Should we believe that the banana needs a “second skin”? If so why, what is the reasoning behind the desire for a “second skin”. The CEO is basically slapping nature in the face that the original skin the banana was provided with is not enough for humans. The original skin does not have “Controlled Ripening Technology” that was developed in the new “second skin”. What should humans believe now; this new technology is capable of slowing the process when a banana ripens. This technology is giving a new perspective on how we might be saving money because and everything is revolved around money, we are either saving money or making more money. In this case the CEO is making more money with this new technology and the consumers are saving money. This new technology is for the great good for the people and only the people. The procedure to make plastic requires chemicals, oil, and other resources that is harsh on the environment but the CEO is saying this is perfectly fine because the plastic is recyclable. What should people believe is truth, is the truth masked behind fancy words that appeal to humans: recyclable= saving money, saving the environment or is it?
“What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.” (Nietzsche, 5)
This quote from Nietzsche really sums it all, “truth are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions”, basically he is saying anyone can tell us that a banana can be place into a preserve freshness bag then show us some evidence that this bag contains “Controlled Ripening Technology” and then in the next couple of weeks a “normal” banana will be a banana from the past Everyone will come to think that bagged bananas are completely natural. And it’s not just bananas they are experimenting with, we have seedless watermelons and seedless grapes, how did they become seedless? The same process of how bananas became seedless. These fancy words, “Controlled Ripening Technology” appeals to humans because humans love technology, the United States is made on technology because technology makes our lives so much simpler. We depend on technology on everything we do in our daily lives; we are so in gulped with technology that one day technology will take over our lives. As simple as inventing the cell phone so that we can communicate across the world now we are inventing plastic bags that slow down the ripening process of bananas. My question to the CEO of Del Monte, what is the difference between a regular household air lock plastic bags verse their plastic bags that contains “Controlled Ripening Technology”? I believe there is no difference between the two; it is just another invention of man.
Mans invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity, and scope. (Leopold, 145)
Wilderness will never disappear, but humans cannot live in wilderness without causing harm and destruction to wilderness. In our perspectives nature has failed and it is up to humans to fix nature, humans are like nature’s own personal cancer. And wilderness is the only remaining area where civilization and the human disease have not fully infected. Wilderness is part of American identity when we first arrive to the New World we were scared of the New World because it was so vast and unexplored. We did not take into consideration that the Native Americans did not see what we saw of their land, so we excluded them from our explorations. In the years to come our perspective of wilderness changed we saw the land as a grand cathedral rather than something that is coming out to get us. Also our respect for nature changed or so w thought it did, because now we face global warming and other environmental issues. The designer for the “second skin bananas” stated that the plastic that the banana will be placed in is recyclable and provides significant carbon footprint savings. And I questioned how? Wasn’t the original packaging that the banana was given biodegradable? The original packaging involved zero recycling and a huge significant carbon footprint saving. What is the difference between the original packaging and now that the banana will be in a plastic bag? I would believe costs would increase and then it’s starting to make sense, the cost of producing a normal banana is not covering profit so companies must figure out a strategy that will lure more customers. Right now in this era majority of Americans are thinking “green”, if the CEO of Del Monte said their bananas involves reducing carbon footprint and everything is recyclable Americans will take that into consideration and figure on yes that make sense we approve bagged bananas over just buying them expose. Also considering the amount of money Americans would be saving because who knows how many bananas goes to waste every day and with the new “Controlled Ripening Technology” these bags are capable of, our banana will stay fresh longer than original bananas.
Americans have set a standard too high another example is beauty for women. We set the bar that we must conserve every natural aspect but by doing so we are destroying everything natural. We must consider all the problems of the world to solve the whole because wilderness is no small problem. We must “think like a mountain”, view life that we are all part of a cycle, if we remove one part the whole mountain will collapsed. If Americans believe our bananas should be bagged we must look at all the parts and ask ourselves what was so unnatural, what was the real problem with the original banana? Why must they be in a bag? When we can answer these questions then we can start moving on to the next question what the trouble with wilderness?
One quote I really enjoyed from Leopold is:
“Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. Food chains are the living channels which conduct energy upward; death and decay return it to the soil. The circuit is not closed; some energy is dissipated in decay, some is added by absorption from the air, some is stored in soils, peats, and long lived forests; but it is a sustained circuit, like a slowly augmented revolving fund of life. There is always a net loss by downhill wash, but this is normally small and offset by the decay of rocks. It is deposited in the ocean and, in the course of geological time, raised to form new lands and new pyramids.” (Leopold ,145)
This statement really sums up of what I’m been trying to explain, our land is not just soil it is where we receive our energy that is provided through plants and animals. We are one giant land pyramid, when we die and when animals die they are decomposed into the ground and are place back into our foods. We take something simple as a banana and alter the way we see a banana this perspective can cause serious damage to our land pyramid. We take civilization above nature, we don’t take it into consideration that if we destroy a part of the cycle the pyramid will collapsed. So next time when you eat a banana think about what would you do with the bag rather than just taking the peel and throwing it in your garden to decompose, that plastic bag is adding one more step.
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