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Tesco is set to remove over 100 more ‘best before’ dates from its fruit and vegetables, as customers say it helps them reduce food waste.
A survey of 2,010 people conducted by independent market research agency, Walnut Unlimited between August 8 and August 10 revealed 69% of the supermarket chain’s customers believe scrapping ‘best before’ dates is a good idea and 53% believe scrapping ‘best before’ dates makes a difference, helping them keep perfectly good food for longer.
‘Best before’ dates will be scrapped on 116 additional products including apples, oranges, cabbages and asparagus. This follows the supermarket’s decision to remove the guidance dates from around 70 fruit and veg lines earlier this year.
Tesco head of food waste reduction Mark Little said: “Removing ‘best before’ dates is our way of making it easier for customers to reduce food waste at home and save money in the process. It’s simply not right that food goes to waste and we’re going to do everything we can to help.”
Last week, Tesco ceo Dave Lewis called for ‘global transparency’ on food waste as 27 of Tesco’s biggest suppliers published their food waste data for the first time.
Tesco claims to be the first UK retailer to publish the amount of food wasted in its UK operations in 2013. The retailer is now over 70% of the way towards its goal that no food that’s safe for human consumption goes to waste from its UK stores and distribution centres. To help reach this goal, staff in stores work with local community groups on a daily basis to redistribute leftover food.
