Aldi UK has committed to lowering food waste by removing ‘Use By’ dates from its fresh milk.
Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket will instead use ‘Best Before’ dates on milk bottles, except for filtered milk, across its stores in England and Wales to prevent milk from being thrown away unnecessarily. The changes will start rolling out in stores by the end of the year.
According to waste reduction charity WRAP, nearly 300,000 tonnes of milk is wasted by UK households each year, with half of the households stating that the reason for pouring it away is due to it not being consumed by the Use By date.
As milk can be safe to use past its Best Before date, provided it has been stored correctly and doesn’t smell foul, Aldi will encourage shoppers to perform a ‘sniff test’ to determine whether their milk is still acceptable.
Liz Fox, Sustainability Director at Aldi UK, said that the supermarket constantly worked to be a more sustainable retailer.
“We are dedicated to preventing food waste wherever we can, both in our stores and helping customers throw away less food at home,” said Fox.
Fox continued that the supermarket hoped shoppers would embrace this change and look, smell, and taste their milk to see if it’s still acceptable to use so that together the supermarket and consumers could reduce food waste affecting the environment.
The removal of Use By Dates is the latest move in Aldi’s efforts to cut its food waste, as it works towards halving this by 2030.
The supermarket has already removed Best Before dates from around 60 fresh fruit and vegetable lines, including apples and pears, citrus fruits, potatoes, carrots and onions, and rolled out its partnership with food surplus app Too Good To Go nationwide in the UK earlier this year.
Customers can purchase a Too Good To Go ‘magic bag’ of food approaching the end of its shelf life for £3.30, with each bag containing at least £10 of groceries.
