CUTTING FOOD WASTE
Supermarket giant, Tesco, are to be applauded for continuing to remove 'best before' dates from 116 more fruit and vegetable lines in a drive to cut food waste The store scrapped the dates on 70 fruit and veg earlier this year and by the end of this month (October 2018) they will have extended this exercise further, to include apples, oranges, cabbages and asparagus.
We Brits throw away more than 10 million tons of edible food per year, estimates to be £300 per person. (I know I don't!). Retailers don't help us by still perpetuating the habit of labelling fresh food packs with two dates - 'use by' and 'best before'. While the former is needed as important information for public health reasons to ensure a product is safe, the 'best before' tag is effectively an estimate by the store as to when an item is at its most tasty.
Tesco's head of food waste (what a job!) is quoted in the UK press this week as saying that in removing the 'best before' date they are making it easier for customers to reduce food waste at home and save money at the same time. Tesco it seems want to do everything to help us to save waste, so hopefully the stores themselves are not throwing away vast amounts food each week when they re-stock? (No comments about that from Tesco, so far).
So what about the other supermarket giants? Last month 89 of the UK's biggest food businesses agreed to measure food waste, publish the details and start tackling the problem within 12 months. Why not NOW?
We Brits throw away more than 10 million tons of edible food per year, estimates to be £300 per person. (I know I don't!). Retailers don't help us by still perpetuating the habit of labelling fresh food packs with two dates - 'use by' and 'best before'. While the former is needed as important information for public health reasons to ensure a product is safe, the 'best before' tag is effectively an estimate by the store as to when an item is at its most tasty.
Tesco's head of food waste (what a job!) is quoted in the UK press this week as saying that in removing the 'best before' date they are making it easier for customers to reduce food waste at home and save money at the same time. Tesco it seems want to do everything to help us to save waste, so hopefully the stores themselves are not throwing away vast amounts food each week when they re-stock? (No comments about that from Tesco, so far).
So what about the other supermarket giants? Last month 89 of the UK's biggest food businesses agreed to measure food waste, publish the details and start tackling the problem within 12 months. Why not NOW?
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