Waitrose will remove "best before" dates on nearly 500 fresh food products in efforts to reduce food waste. From September, the grocery giant will scrap the dates on packaged fruit and vegetables to encourage consumers to use their own judgment about when food has gone off.
The move is expected to eliminate millions of baskets' worth of food waste by preventing people throwing away products that are still edible, the retailer claimed. Earlier this month, Marks & Spencer axed "best before" dates from more than 300 fruit and vegetable products following a successful trial.
Tesco led the way for the high street supermarkets when it got rid of the dates on more than 100 fresh food products in 2018. Marija Rompani, director of sustainability and ethics at John Lewis Partnership, which owns Waitrose, said: "UK households throw away 4.5 million tonnes of edible food every year, meaning that all the energy and resources used in food production is wasted.
