Certain branches of the Co-operative will begin selling food past the best before date for just 10p in a bid to cut down on food waste.
The ‘Co-op Guide To Dating’ campaign will see 125 stores across East Anglia selling dried foods and tinned products – such as pasta, crisps and rice – when they reach the best before date for 10p, making it the first major retailer to do so, writes the BBC.
According to the Co-op, they estimate the initiative will stop around 50,000 items from being thrown away every year.
The Food Standards Agency said the UK throws away a huge 7.3 million tonnes of food every year
And just last week national waste agency, Wrap, launched a new initiative to help prevent edible food going to waste. The agency called Co-op’s move ‘bold’ and confirmed the campaign was in accordance with food safety standards.
Roger Grosvenor, East of England Co-op’s joint chief executive said the 10p items sold within hours of being reduced.
Adding:
The vast majority of our customers understand they are fine to eat and appreciate the opportunity to make a significant saving on some of their favourite products.
This is not a money making exercise, but a sensible move to reduce food waste and keep edible food in the food chain.
Ahead of Christmas, Aldi is actually going to be giving away surplus food.
Come Christmas Eve, the supermarket says it will hand out leftover food to good causes and invites charities who can collect it from stores as they close up for the day at 4pm.
Everybody has been praising the supermarket and urging others to follow suit.
Aldi posted a notice online, which reads:
As our stores will shut at 4pm on Christmas Eve until the 27th of December, we will have a variety of good quality surplus food products that we wish to redistribute in support of less fortunate individuals and to prevent food going to waste.
We are unfortunately unable to deliver products locally, so it would be essential that your organisation is able to collect. We will expect the levels of food available to vary, however estimations of around 20-30 crates will be expected from each store. If you wish to collect all products available, we would therefore recommend providing a large car or van, or being prepared to make multiple journeys.
However you are more than welcome to take as much of the products offered as you can use – you are not required to take all products. We would also ask to ensure that you bring appropriate collection containers (bags, crates, boxes, etc.) as we will only have a limited number of cardboard boxes potentially available for use.
Since 2012, Aldi has donated food to vulnerable people through their work with FareShare, a registered charity which redistributes surplus food to local charities throughout the UK.
This includes day-care shelters, women’s refuges and children’s breakfast clubs. Between June 2015 and June 2016, Aldi donated the equivalent of over 216,000 meals and said they also provide food to other smaller charities.
We’re definitely moving in the right direction.
