Arya Mathew Wins with Nature’s Label

Arya Mathew, ’22, was with a friend who accidentally, while eating an apple, swallowed the PLU sticker common on fresh fruits and vegetables. Concerned about what was in the ingested label and if it’s was harmful, Mathew began researching exactly what goes into one of those little adhesive markers.

“We found out it that it wasn’t poisonous to us, but it is harming the environment,” she says. “And the problem is that PLU stickers are so small that no one thinks of them as problems to the environment but if you just take the stickers found on avocados, oranges and bananas sold in the U.S. each year, you could wrap the world 1.6 times in plastic, a kilometer wide.”