The retailer’s decision follows a 12-week trial of “naked” cucumbers where there has been “no real negative feedback”, said Carla Mills, category buyer for produce.

“We will also be looking at other areas of produce packaging to understand if a reduction in packaging can take place without it having a detrimental affect upon quality of the product and also its keeping ability at home.”

The move should save around eight tonnes of plastic going into landfill annually, says the Co-Op.

But Derek Hargreaves, technical officer at the Cucumber Growers’ Association whose members use around 200 tonnes of shrink wrap a year, said the shrink wrap was recyclable.

“It might be that there could be a thinner film,” he said. “And shrink-wrapped produce arrives in returnable plastic containers. Co-Op will now have to throw out cardboard boxes,” he told PRW.com.

The CGA’s members shrink-wrap their produce to keep them fresh for longer.

Research done by Hargeaves in February showed that a three-day old naked cucumber in cool storage loses up to 3.5% of its weight. After 14 days the loss has risen up to nearly 15%.

If cucumbers are shrink-wrapped, weight loss is under 1 % after three days and rises to less than 1.5% after two weeks.

The research also points out that “none of the naked fruit was saleable after day five and would not have been picked up by Mrs Public after day three”. However, the shrink-wrapped fruit was “just about saleable but slightly soft” after 14 days.

Hargreaves said he doesn’t believe other major stores will follow the Co-Op’s decision.

A spokesperson for Sainsbury’s told PRW.com that they “definitely have no plans” to sell their cucumbers naked.

“They don’t stay as fresh and they have a longer shelf-life,” she said. “Also the skin is easily damaged not even from transport but from customers handling them and through fingernail scratches.”

Around 97% of the UK’s cucumbers are sold shrink-wrapped, Hargreaves added. None of the major retailers buy naked cucumbers. “It is only the local shops, specialty stores and sandwich shops that buy naked cucumbers because they don’t want to have to pay for taking the shrink-warp away to land-fill or for recycling.”