Marks & Spencer will take away “greatest earlier than” dates from greater than 300 fruit and vegetable merchandise this week.
Following a profitable trial, the retailer will scrap dates from recent produce throughout its shops and encourage prospects to make use of their judgement to determine when meals can not be eaten.
Within the UK, greater than two million tonnes of meals that’s nonetheless edible goes to waste, in line with the Waste & Sources Motion Programme (WRAP).
Vegetables and fruit are among the most commonly-wasted objects in households, notably apples and potatoes.
They make up 85 per cent of M&S’s produce providing.
The “greatest earlier than” dates on recent produce will probably be changed by a brand new code that allows M&S workers to verify freshness and high quality.
The retailer dedicated to halve meals waste by 2030 as a part of its sustainability roadmap.
It additionally goals to have all of its edible surplus be redistributed by 2025.
Different steps M&S has taken to cut back meals waste consists of utilizing unsold baguettes and boul loaves to make frozen garlic bread.
The transfer follows different supermarkets which have made comparable choices on “greatest earlier than” dates.
In 2018, Tesco scrapped “greatest earlier than” dates on greater than 100 fruit and vegetable merchandise, whereas Morrisons introduced its plan to take away “use by” dates from 90 per cent of its personal model milk in January this yr.
Morrisons inspired prospects to make use of a “sniff take a look at” earlier than throwing merchandise away as an alternative of adhering strictly to the “use by” or “greatest earlier than” dates.
In keeping with WRAP’s steerage on “greatest earlier than dates”, printed in April 2020, many meals objects which are previous they’re dates “stays protected and completely good to eat for days, weeks, months and even years” afterwards.
Jamie Crummie, co-founder of meals waste app Too Good To Go, mentioned in WRAP’s report: “Date labelling has, and continues to be, a complicated difficulty for each companies and customers.
“This uncertainty might result in meals waste on a big scale throughout society. For instance, final yr we discovered that 720 million eggs are wasted by Brits every year due to confusions round ‘greatest earlier than’ date labelling.
“‘Finest earlier than’ is solely a measure of high quality somewhat than security and we welcome the newest steerage from WRAP for meals enterprise and redistribution organisations on the difficulty.”
Andrew Clappen, director of meals know-how at M&S, mentioned: “We’re decided to sort out meals waste – our groups and suppliers work arduous to ship recent, scrumptious, responsibly-sourced produce at nice worth and we have to do all we are able to to ensure none of it will get thrown away.
“To try this, we have to be revolutionary and bold – eradicating ‘greatest earlier than’ dates the place protected to take action, trialling new methods to promote our merchandise, and galvanising our prospects to get inventive with leftovers and embrace change.”
Catherine David, director of collaboration and alter at WRAP, added: “We’re thrilled to see this transfer from M&S, which can cut back meals waste and assist sort out the local weather disaster.
“Eradicating dates on recent fruit and veg can save the equal of seven million buying baskets of meals being binned in our houses.
“We urge extra supermarkets to get forward on meals waste by axing date labels from recent produce, permitting individuals to make use of their very own judgement.”
