The change, which will roll out this week, will rely on customers using their judgment to determine whether goods are still good for consumption. The measure will affect 85% of the supermarket’s fresh produce supply. The decision, first reported by the Mail on Sunday, is the latest step in the slow death of the best before date, an innovation that was meant to help consumers but has instead been blamed for creating a mountain of waste from perfectly edible food. “Best before” labels differ from “use by” dates, with the former often merely a measure of aesthetics, while the latter tends to indicate a safety hazard if ignored. Tesco, the UK’s biggest supermarket chain, had already announced the end of best-before dates on its own-brand fruit and vegetables back in 2018, while German supermarket Lidl also says it doesn’t include best-before dates reducing food waste. . Morrisons in January stopped using dates, instead asking customers to apply the famous “sniff test” to check whether cow’s milk is still drinkable. Potatoes are the most wasted food in the UK, followed by bread and milk, according to Wrap, a food waste charity. M&S will also offer customers the option to buy three bananas at a time – rather than a bunch – to reduce waste on another popular product – although these will be supplied in packaged ’25p banana bags’. M&S aims to halve food waste from its products by 2030 compared to 2018, and wants to redistribute 100% of edible surplus food by 2025. Achieving these targets will put it in line with the UK’s commitment to meet the United Nations target of halving food waste by 2030 compared to 2007 – as well as helping consumers save hundreds of millions of pounds every year feeding the bin. Andrew Clappen, director of food technology at M&S, said the supermarket had to “do everything we can” to reduce the amount being thrown away. Subscribe to the Business Today daily email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter @BusinessDesk “To do this, we need to be innovative and ambitious – removing the best before the dates when it is safe to do so, trying new ways to sell our products and encouraging our customers to get creative with leftovers and embrace change,” he said. Reducing food waste is critical to addressing the carbon emissions associated with agriculture and food distribution. Wrap estimates that 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions can be tackled just by changing the way we produce and consume products and food. He said removing dates from fresh fruit and vegetables could save 7 million baskets of food a year. Catherine David, director at Wrap, said: “We are delighted to see this move from M&S, which will reduce food waste and help tackle the climate crisis. “We are urging more supermarkets to step up food waste by removing date tags from fresh produce, allowing people to use their own judgement.”
