Sainsbury's is aiming to stop £2 billion of food being wasted by removing 'freeze on day of purchase' advice from its packaging.
Together with the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), the retailer is rolling out new labelling advising customers to freeze food as soon as possible up to the product's use by date.
Changing this advice will help stop over-cautious shoppers from throwing away up to 800,000 tonnes of perfectly good food each year, the supermarket claims.
Beth Hart, Sainsbury's head of product technology for fresh and frozen, said: "The 'freeze on day of purchase' advice needs to be changed as there is no food safety reason why it cannot be frozen at any point prior to the use by date.
"As a large UK retailer, we have a responsibility to minimise food waste where possible and this new labelling will certainly help us do that. As one customer pointed out to me while discussing the previous labelling, 'how does the product know which day I purchased it on?'"
Research from Sainsbury's shows that 62 per cent of the UK regularly uses the freezer to lengthen the life of food, while in a separate study by WRAP, only 21 per cent of people interviewed had frozen food nearing its use by date during the past week. For this reason, it is hoped that the new labelling, which has been drawn up in consultation with WRAP will have a great impact.
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