A viral photo of crownless Del Monte pineapples is reviving a heated food debate, with shoppers questioning why the leafy tops are being removed before the fruit reaches stores. In a Threads post shared on 18 August 2026, user @wynsongbyrd challenged the sustainability pitch attached to the display, arguing that the crown is not simply waste because consumers can take it home and grow another pineapple from it.
The companies promoting crownless pineapples say the change is about logistics as much as rubbish. Sainsbury's says removing crowns lets it fit more fruit into each shipping box, cutting 2,500 boxes a year, while Aldi estimated a wider rollout of its trial could save around 187 tonnes of cardboard annually and divert 1,400 tonnes of crowns from household waste.
Why Retailers Want Pineapples Without Tops
Crownless pineapples are ordinary pineapples whose spiky leaf clusters are removed during production, usually before transport. The Del Monte display circulating on Threads tells shoppers, 'Crowns are planted for future crops', while Fresh Del Monte has separately described crown removal on its Rubyglow pineapple as a way to improve packing efficiency and reduce transport costs and carbon emissions. The company says detached leaves can then be replanted or used for animal feed.
Sainsbury's introduced crownless pineapples in the UK in November 2023 with a similar argument. It said 25% to 50% of crowns removed in production were suitable for replanting, while damaged or undersized crowns could become animal feed, and estimated the move could reduce annual waste by 700 tonnes. Aldi followed with a regional UK trial in June 2024, saying the change could also reduce the cardboard needed to transport the fruit.
The Crown Is Not Just Packaging
The criticism spreading online centres on one fact the waste framing can obscure: a pineapple crown is living propagation material. The University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences lists the fruit crown as one of four common ways to propagate pineapples and says it can be detached, dried briefly and planted in soil or a container. A shopper who buys a crowned pineapple therefore really can use the top to start another plant.
Growing that new fruit takes patience, with university guidance putting the time from planting to harvest at roughly 18 to 24 months depending on variety and conditions. That has not stopped home growers from seeing the crown as useful rather than disposable. @wynsongbyrd wrote: 'The CROWN is the part we can take home, plant & grow another pineapple from. Now it's removed BEFORE the fruit reaches us.'
Another Threads user, @d.z.carter, put the suspicion more bluntly: 'Yeah. Those sellers don't want us to regrow them.' There is no evidence in published company explanations that crown removal is designed to stop shoppers growing pineapples at home. In fact, the stated system relies partly on replanting suitable crowns at source, meaning some of the same reproductive material is being retained within commercial agriculture.
Sustainability or a Question of Choice?
The commercial case is straightforward: remove a bulky part of the fruit, reuse it closer to the farm and fit more edible pineapple into the same transport space. A 2023 grocery experiment described by industry researcher Toby Myers found crownless pineapples could fit roughly 25% more fruit into each cardboard shipping box. His trial also suggested consumers would accept the crownless version when the price and sustainability message were adjusted.
The backlash, however, shows that consumers do not all define 'waste' in the same way. For someone who would bin the top, removing it upstream can reduce household waste and improve transport efficiency; for someone who would plant it, the crown has another use. The dispute is therefore less about whether pineapple crowns can be reused and more about who gets to decide where that reuse happens.
