A new report from WRAP suggests that increasing the product life of a range of foods – by just one day – would eliminate 0.2 million tonnes, 5%, of household food waste.
WRAP suggest that the main ways that product life can be extended are:
challenging the ‘buffer’ between the use by date specified and
the maximum life a product remains safe/ retains its quality;- only issuing guidance about the length of time to keep a product once opened if needed from a food safety point of view;
- improvements in the supply chain to increase the product life available to consumers; and
- that the only dates used on products are ‘use by’ and ‘best before’ dates, with all ‘display until’ dates being removed from packaging.
The really good news is that as well as the potential of significant savings for consumers, WRAP calculate that these actions have the potential benefit for retailers of around £0.1bn in waste prevention alone. Always good to have strong motivation for change!