Tesco get rid of ‘best before’ dates from fruit and vegetable lines

Tesco have announced that they are getting rid of their ‘best before dates’ from fruit and vegetable lines in a bid to reduce food waste.

In May, the supermarket trialled scraping the best before dates on over 70 products. From this month, an additional 116 products will be added to the line.

Mark Little, Tesco’s Head of Food Waste Reduction, 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.”

A survey conducted with a sample of over 2,010 people found that 69 per cent of customers believe scraping best before dates is a good idea, with 53 per cent believing that it makes a difference.

Food waste is a growing problem in the UK, £13 billion of edible food is thrown away from homes each year.

Tesco have implemented other measures to ensure food waste is reduced, they work in partnership with suppliers to find ways to use as much of their crop as possible. They are also focused on the plastic pollution crisis and have reverse vending machines that they are trialling across selected stores in the UK.

This news follows the UK Government announcing a pilot scheme to reduce food waste. The initiative will focus on surplus food from the retail and manufacturing industry.