Tesco : New re-sealable fresh salad bags will keep produce fresher and reduce food waste

27 May 2017

Re-sealable bags for fresh leaf salad produce will keep food fresher for longer and help customers reduce food waste at home.

We're always looking for new ways to bring the freshest produce to our customers. They tell us that some of our packaging can be improved upon to keep salads fresher for longer. Salads are one of the UK's most wasted foods by households. Around 37,000 tonnes are thrown away from homes each year. That's the equivalent of 178 million bags of salad.

Customer driven change

We have been listening to our customers' ideas and working with our packaging suppliers to produce re-sealable salad bags. Bag salads haven't changed for years so we've decided to react to customers' suggestions for keeping the produce they contain fresher.

The lines that will have the new re-sealable bags have been selected by our customers. They told us that the greatest help to reduce food waste would be with the bigger packs they use multiple times throughout the week. You'll start to see the new packs on Iceberg 260g, Sweet and Crunchy 370g, Baby Spinach 240g and Family Babyleaf 140g.

There will be no increase in price for the customer. We are making the investment to help reduce food waste at home and reactingto customer suggestions with some little helps.

Packaging to reduce food waste

The bag may also be re-used. With a quick clean and dry the bag would be suitable to use as a sandwich bag or to store other food stuffs for a short time.

Packaging developments, like this, support our food waste reduction targets. We're working with suppliers on some trials to innovate how our produce is packaged.We're looking for better performing packagingthat takes the needs of older consumersand single households into account. With our 'eat fresh, keep fresh' chicken fillet packaging, the fillets come in a packet that has a separate compartment for each chicken breast, with a tear seal between the two. This meanscustomers caneat one and keep the other which we hope will help them to reduce food waste at home.

Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP)have commended Tesco for introducing this new re-sealable packaging adding that it will help in the fight to reduce household food waste.

No time for waste

Launching this new packaging is part of our ongoing work to tackle food waste wherever it occurs - from farm to fork. Tesco believes that no food that could be eaten should be wasted. That's why we've committed that no food that is safe for human consumption will go to waste from Tesco UK Retail operations by the end of 2017.