Wednesday 27 July 2022

M&S scraps best before dates on fruit and veg to reduce food waste

Marks & Spencer (M&S) is removing best before dates from more than 300 fruit and vegetable products to tackle food waste.

The dates on around 85% of M&S' produce offering will be replaced with a new code that staff can use to check freshness and quality.

The move is designed to encourage customers to throw away less edible food at home by their judgement – as research from WRAP suggests an estimated 6.6 million tonnes of food is thrown away by UK households every year.

It also supports the supermarket's pledge to halve food waste by 2030, with 100% of edible surplus to be redistributed by 2025.

Andrew Clappen, Director of Food Technology said: “We’re determined to tackle food waste – our teams and suppliers work hard to deliver fresh, delicious, responsibly sourced produce at great value and we need to do all we can to make sure none of it gets thrown away. To do that, we need to be innovative and ambitious - removing best before dates where safe to do so, trialling new ways to sell our products and galvanising our customers to get creative with leftovers and embrace change.

“The other side of the challenge is making sure anything edible we don’t sell reaches those who need it most. By partnering with Neighbourly since 2015 we’ve ensured over 44 million meals are redistributed to local communities. Our promise as we aim for our target of halving food waste is to keep searching for solutions while we maintain the standards and value our customers expect.”