Morrisons scraps dates on fresh fruit and veg
Morrisons is scrapping date labels and removing ‘Display Until’ messaging on nearly 200 of its fresh fruit, vegetable and salad products ahead of Christmas as it looks to help reduce food waste.
The supermarket wants to encourage customers to use their own judgement on whether items are good to eat after being bought and stored at home.
Whilst some items such as bananas, watermelon and pineapple will have their dates removed completely, most will be replaced by a code system, which will be used by Morrisons team members to ensure freshness on shelf.
Damon Johnson, head of technical produce and horticulture, at Morrisons said: “People tend to over buy food for Christmas dinner to ensure plenty for all but by cooking what you need, saving veg for meals between Christmas and New Year as well as enjoying leftovers, budgets can go further.
“Now more than ever it’s important to help our customers to reduce their food waste. We hope by removing dates from our produce lines, changing our messaging on packs and by providing our customers with advice on storage, we can support households in extending the life of their food and save customers money this Christmas.”
Next year, Morrisons aims to update its packaging for more perishable pre-packed products such as berries, grapes and stone fruit. The changes will see ‘Display Until’ text being replaced by ‘Best Before’ labelling.
The moves are part of Morrisons’ plans to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. Earlier this year, it replaced ‘Use By’ dates with ‘Best Before’ dates on its own brand milk. In 2020, Morrisons also replaced ‘Use By’ dates across some of its own-brand yoghurt and hard cheese ranges.
Catherine David, director of collaboration and Change at WRAP, said: “WRAP is thrilled to see these changes from Morrisons on its products to help tackle food waste in our homes.
“We call on more retailers to make these changes. The average family in the UK throws away over £700 worth of food a year – check out Love Food Hate Waste for tips on how to reduce food waste, save money and fight climate change.”
