22 August 2022
The following is an extract from a piece written by our CEO Marcus Gover first published in The Grocer. In it we call on retailers to remove best before date labels on fresh fruit and veg as part of the fight against food waste.
Waitrose has become the latest big player to remove date labels from a selection of its fresh fruit & veg items. It follows hot on the heels of M&S, Ocado, Lidl and others WRAP has worked with to make this change.
We know best before dates can lead to people throwing away fruit & vegetables that are still good to eat. Removing these labels means consumers are increasingly able to use their own judgement on when to eat hundreds of everyday food items – something that can really help in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis.
70%
of wasted food comes from the home.
There is no legal requirement to have a best before date on fruit and veg, and at WRAP, we first recommended their removal from many fruit & veg in 2019. But even we were astonished to unearth, in our report in February this year, just how much longer it indicated that consumers kept fruit & veg when not influenced by best before dates.
When combined with other measures – selling fruit & veg loose so people can buy what they need, and encouraging customers to store items at optimum temperatures at home, keeping food fresher for longer – it’s a game-changing formula.