SYgle>Industry Information>Marks & Spencer removes best-before dates on fruit and vegetables

Marks & Spencer removes best-before dates on fruit and vegetables

Column: industry Tag: Marks & Spencer,M&S,best-before dates,fruit,vegetables Published: 2022-07-21 09:53 Source: www.mirror.co.uk Author: Sam Barker

The idea is to prevent households throwing away food that is still good to eat (Image: WalesOnline/Rob Browne)

M&S is removing best before dates from loads of fresh fruit and vegetables to try to cut food waste.

Supermarkets are beginning to end use-by dates to cut down on food waste.

Morrisons has scrapped the dates on its own-brand milk and the Co-op has done the same for yoghurt, while many retailers have stopped putting the dates on vegetables.

Now M&S is scrapping best before dates on more than 300 fruit and veg - around 85% of all its produce.

This includes foods like apples, potatoes and broccoli, which are often thrown away before they get eaten.

UK households throw away around 6.6million tonnes of food a year, according to research from food waste experts WRAP.

That is the same as 550,000 double-decker buses, or 440,000 elephants.

Best before dates are part of the problem, as often food can safely be eaten beyond the point listed on packaging.

Now M&S is replacing best before dates with a secret code that shoppers won't be able to work out.

This code lets supermarket staff remove food that is really going off, but otherwise lets shoppers buy things using their common sense.

M&S said all its supermarkets would make these changes this week.

The supermarket wants to halve its own food waste by 2030, and plans to give away all of the edible food it chucks out by 2025.

It has already been giving away food to charities - with more than 44million meals donated since 2015.

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