Potatoes, lemons, tangerines, garlic, avocados—the list of produce packaged and sold in plastic mesh bags could go on. And while these bags can technically be reused or repurposed, they often go straight into the garbage bin. What if there were a more sustainable design solution?

As part of a class project, a group of Cal Poly students explored an alternative to packaging citrus fruit like mandarins, lemons, and limes often sold by the bag. Their clever concept, dubbed Froot, would go on to win multiple awards in three separate competitions.

“We use a competition as a class project,” said Professor Javier de la Fuente, the department chair of the Industrial Technology and Packaging department at Cal Poly. He was an advisor for the project along with Linh Toscani and Irene Carbonell. “It’s the Paperboard Packaging Alliance Student Design Challenge. We use their prompt to teach how to design with corrugated paperboard.”