Sell-by dates and plastic packaging are past their best

SUPERMARKETS must ditch sell-by dates and plastic packaging on fruit and vegetables in order to reduce waste, a government-backed report has said.

New advice for packaging and labelling fresh produce has been issued by waste reduction body Wrap, the Food Standards Agency and Defra to tackle one of the biggest areas of food waste.

Around a fifth of food brought into UK homes ends up as waste, including £4 billion worth of binned fruit and vegetables, costing the average household hundreds of pounds a year.

A previous investigation by The Telegraph as part of a Zero Waste campaign, aimed at improving recycling and reducing plastic waste, found that in almost every major supermarket, it was far more expensive to buy fruit and vegetables without plastic packaging.

It is also cheaper to buy fresh food in multipacks than it is to buy the same amount of single items, incentivising people to buy food they may waste.

The new advice from Wrap encourages retailers to offer fresh produce in a range of pack sizes and loose, where it is suitable to do so, which can cut plastic packaging and give customers the opportunity to buy the amount that they need.

Leaving off the “best before” date on some packaged items can also help reduce waste, for example with potatoes, by encouraging people to use their judgment more.

Peter Maddox, director at Wrap, said public concern over plastic packaging had increased since the last survey in 2015, and the guidance had been updated to deal with single-use plastics for fresh produce.