Less than a week after it was revealed that the British public throws away 40 per cent of bagged leaves, Tesco has announced that it is launching resealable salad bags in order to curb food waste.
Despite being one of the healthiest foods around, salads are the UK’s most wasted foods, with households throwing away around 178 million bags per year.
The new bags introduced by the supermarket giant will feature a sliding zip lock and thicker walls to prevent spillage and damage to the leaves.
After undertaking research Tesco found that shoppers do not always buy bagged salads with a meal in mind, leading to forgotten purchases.
On top of this current bags are not strong enough to protect the leaves and shoppers believe that air going into the bag once it is opened is “bad air” and want to stop that from happening.
Adam Hill, Tesco’s produce buyer manager said:
Over the last two years we’ve been working with our growers to develop new packaging which allows customers to return to their bags of salad over a number of days with very little hassle or fuss.
“We know many shoppers roll up their bagged salads after using them once and stick them at the back of their fridges where they are forgotten for days or even weeks. These new bags are made from stronger material to protect the leaves from getting scrunched up – so preventing them from going to waste.”
Understandably, the resealable bags were welcomed by WRAP.
Its business programmes director, Steve Creed, said:
We commend Tesco for introducing a new resealable packaging format for their pre-prepared salads which will help in the fight to reduce household food waste.
“At present, nearly 40 per cent of lettuce and leafy salads bought by householders end up being thrown away in the home.”
In 2012, WRAP published research that provided estimates on the amount and type of food and drink wasted in UK homes.
It found that lettuce and leafy salads had among the highest level (nearly 40 per cent) of household food waste in the UK.
