This is just about the coolest thing ever. Dutch designer Anneke Jacobs first made this light fixture out of banana boxes in 2003 – but now, she’s released DIY instructions. I’m going to get to work on mine right away (you can buy one, too, if the project seems too daunting.)
Download the plans here (PDF file.)
via InventorSpot; thanks, Dimitri!
That’s two bucks a pop. And they’re selling.
An interesting Chiquita experiment at Belgium’s Brussels National airport – appropriate, since the transportation hub is just a fifteen-minute, one-stop train ride from the global banana bank at the Catholic University of Leuven, where over 1,400 varieties of the fruit are preserved for scientific experimentation and against future ecosystem loss (if only the banana companies would contribute a bit to the funding of the bank!)
At the top is the “Chiquita Banana on the Go” product. This is a somewhat different take on the single-sale banana than the not-quite-successful convenience store version (below.) Note the bar code and the per-fruit branding – the fruit we see at our U.S. 7Eleven stores is sometimes sold in banana-logo cartons, but aren’t individually labeled. Also interesting: the Belgian airport bananas sat right next to bowls of apples and oranges, which weren’t branded. After more than a century, the banana is pretty much the only fruit that takes to this kind of labeling.
Note the bar codes: perfect for the banana as a “packaged good,” rather than a plain-old item of produce. Packaged goods, of course, cost more.
Analysis: does the branding make a difference in this retail venue? The fascinating thing here is that Chiquita is using its brand-name for the opposite purpose in the airport than it does in supermarkets. Sold at grocery stores, the banana is a commodity – cheaper than apples and oranges. The logo serves as a gentle incentive toward consumer choice: “pick me,” it says, “over other bananas,” even though they’re all the same. But in the airport, Chiquita is positioning its fruit as a luxury good – something with more value than the plainly-presented competition. Does it work? The worker at the café told me that the bananas still sold at twice the rate of the apples and oranges, despite – in this case – also costing twice as much (and that’s a lot: €1.50 is about two bucks these days – enough to buy four pounds, or up to 12 bananas, in some parts of the U.S.!)
Final point: This reflects the changing role of the fruit in our culture. Less and less is it competing with other produce – and more and more with snacks like candy and chips. That’s a good thing in terms of public health – and probably for the banana companies, too, which, if the transformation continues, will ultimately be able to charge a lot more for fruit sold by the piece, rather than by the pound. Still, at this point, it seems the Euros are more willing to swallow the banana as a snack-food substitute than we in the U.S…
This exclusive report copyright 2008 www.bananabook.org.
Two of the world’s biggest banana companies, the American chemical companies who supply them, along with several other companies they do business with, are being sued by pilots, ground crew, and residents of the Ecuadorian plantation town of Puerto Viejo for health damage they allegedly suffered during years of spraying of Mancozeb, a fungicide used to combat Black Sigatoka, the most common and costly disease affecting commercial bananas.
The suit was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.) on September 18, 2008. It names Dole, Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Chemical and Noboa – which markets bananas in the U.S. under the “Bonita” brand name – as primary defendants, and accuses them of using the chemical despite knowing that it would cause birth defects, cancer, and respiratory and fertility problems among banana workers and their families.
Mancozeb is listed by the Pesticde Action Network as having “toxicity to humans, including carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, and acute toxicity.” Mancozeb is a fairly common garden fungicide, and the U.S. EPA regards it as safe, but only in small quantities and with proper protective gear and usage. The suit alleges all were lacking.
The suit is one of several that banana companies are facing and have faced in U.S. courts for their actions overseas. Last year, Dole received a mixed verdict in a similar pesticide suit involving Nicaraguan workers, with some receiving damages, and some charges being dismissed. Chiquita is currently being sued by families who allege that payments the company made to Colombian terrorist groups directly funded activities that led to the deaths of their loved ones.
Photo from Prudential Cape Shores Real Estate. Link Below.
Lorenzo Dow Baker – founder of the American banana industry. Now you can live in his house. Photo: Library of Congress.
This home – which sits on ten acres within the Cape Cod National Seashore, in Massachusetts, was the birthplace of Lorenzo Dow Baker, the sea captain whose first load of bananas to the United States – sold in 1870 – launched the Boston Fruit Company, later United Fruit, now known as Chiquita. After he became a banana mogul, Baker’s primary residence was at a mansion in the banana-rush town of Port Antonio, Jamaica – where he was said to light his cigars with five dollar bills – but that dwelling has long since burned to the ground. This seaside parcel was put on the market by its current owners, the Biddle family – a highbrow clan known for their literary salons, according a Boston Globe story – in mid-October. The property is also the former home of American writer John Dos Passos, who – ironically – was a critic of the company Baker founded.
Here’s (first entry on the page) the real estate listing, with more pictures, if you’re thinking of bidding.
Update: This entry was posted in October, 2008. As of March, 2009, the home was still for sale, and the price hasn’t changed.
The biggest news item I avoid in this blog are banana trade wars. That’s because it would take me thousands and thousands of words to explain why the U.S., Europe, and the big banana companies have been fighting for years over who gets to sell bananas where. There have been resolutions that have led to no resolutions, problems that have led to more problems, and lots of ugly behavior on both sides. Suffice it to say that the whole thing is corrupt, and that none of it really affects whether or not bananas show up on store shelves (though it does affect where those bananas come from, and prices, as you’ll see, below.) The problem is that when you enter the labyrinth, you just can’t find your way back. Sorry.
But sometimes, I just have to say something. Last week, Dole and Del Monte – Dole’s the second biggest banana company in the world, and Del Monte, depending on how you count, is probably third or fourth – were fined a total of $83 million by the European Union for conspiring to fix banana prices in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden. These fines were good. Price-fixing is bad, and I’m always happy – we should all be happy – when banana company skullduggery is exposed.
The interesting thing about all this is who turned the Dole and Del Monte in: it was Chiquita, their rival, and the world’s biggest banana company.
This time, I won’t comment, other than to refer you to the source of the picture, above.
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman recommends it.
Listen to my interview on NPR's Fresh Air.
My own op-ed in the New York Times.
Other Books:
