Organic Origins

Dole now includes origin information on its bananas. In addition to the country name, stickers on the bananas have a three-digit code. By entering that code on the Dole website, you can view information and photos about the country, the farm, and the people involved in the production and harvesting of the banana you hold in your hand.

It’s nice to see a company implementing an idea which has been circulating around the interaction design community for some time, although it’s a bit strange that they’re using a website to manage the queries. Why not use a cell phone like these other examples? Probably because doing so would enable decision-making in the supermarket, whereas Dole would rather you purchase the bananas first and then visit their site. It probably wouldn’t take much to hack a work-around to query the Dole database from a mobile phone, though.

At the moment, this kind of tracking is a curiosity, and I believe it will remain so until some kind of certifying body exists to independently review and verify the claims made by Dole. That assumes, of course, that Dole and other companies are interested in providing this information for reasons other than PR.

via Treehugger

Tags: bananas, dole, tracking, mobile, phone, organic, origin