Could naked fruit and veg cut food waste?

Plastic packaging used on a variety of fresh produce faces the chop as Wrap pushes for new regulations. Nick Hughes reports.

The era of packaged fruit and veg could be over then? That’s the goal of some campaigners. Wrap, the waste and resources NGO, is calling on the UK Government to ban the use of plastic packaging on some uncut fruit and vegetables sold by retailers to help reduce both food and plastic waste.

Why fresh produce specifically? Because fresh fruit and vegetables make up more household food waste in the UK than any other food type: 1.6 million tonnes of edible fruit and vegetables are thrown away each year, costing £3.8bn. Wrap’s evidence has found that households generally struggle to buy the right amount of fresh fruit and vegetables because of how most of these products are sold (pre-portioned and wrapped in plastic), resulting in wasted money and food. It says by selling just three items – apples, bananas and potatoes – loose retailers could prevent 8 million shopping baskets’ worth of food going to waste by enabling people to buy closer to their needs.

We’ve been here before haven’t we? We have. As part of the Plastics Pact, led by Wrap, there is already a voluntary target for retailers to ensure that, by 2025, 30% of the volume of uncut fruit and veg sold is loose, rising to 50% by the end of 2030. That’s compared to an average of just 19.4% of fresh fruit and veg that was sold loose in 2022.

So why is regulation needed? Wrap says a comprehensive approach involving both voluntary agreements and government intervention will be needed to shift the dial on packaging of fresh produce. That’s because there are significant barriers to removing it: supply chains have been optimised to sell fresh produce packaged, while shoppers have become accustomed to buying it that way. Without a level playing field, Wrap is worried that the industry won’t be able to change at the pace and scale required.

What specifically is being proposed? Wrap is recommending the government implements a phased approach to regulation, starting with banning primary packaging on the 21 products already identified as part of the voluntary target. These have been earmarked by businesses as being less problematic and include things like apples, bananas, broccoli, onions and carrots. Wrap says a future second phase would need to be defined via further consultation with industry but should include an evolution of phase one where the scope of products sold loose increases.

How do we know this won’t actually add to food waste by reducing shelf life? Wrap has been researching the subject for some time in order to build the evidence base for its proposal. In February 2022, it published research in which it tested five commonly wasted items – apples, bananas, broccoli, cucumber and potatoes – stored in the original packaging and loose, and at different temperatures. It found that selling the five items loose and removing ‘best before’ dates could result in a combined saving of around 100,000 tonnes of food waste a year from UK households, plus more than 10,300 tonnes of plastic and 130,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. In the case of cucumbers, however, the benefits were not clear cut and dependent on the range of sizes available. Where smaller or half-size cucumbers are available, the research predicted a modest decrease in waste when sold loose; if not available, a modest increase. This helps explain why cucumbers don’t feature in the list of 21 items initially earmarked for a ban. 

Are there any exemptions from the proposed rules? Quite a few. For phase one, Wrap recommends that organic and Fairtrade items are exempt where a PLU (price look-up) sticker is not feasible and packaging is considered important to differentiate the items. ‘Ripe and Ready’ SKUs which are more prone to damage should also be excluded. Looking further ahead, if phase two were to involve a ban on packaging across all uncut fresh produce items, further exemptions will be required for delicate items like berries and soft fruits and short shelf-life items like herbs.

What about the risk of unintended consequences? Increases in secondary packaging like boxes and containers and tertiary packaging like pallets and large shipping containers are likely, according to Wrap, albeit it says in general this packaging is easier to collect and control than primary packaging, and is also easier to recycle. Indeed, a key argument for removing plastic packaging from fruit and veg is that so little of it is ever recycled. Most of the packaging used is either PP or PE film which, whilst technically recyclable, is not collected by most local authorities and is not being effectively recycled at scale through voluntary schemes. A recent investigation found the vast majority of soft plastic packaging collected by Sainsbury’s and Tesco in stores is not being recycled into new food packaging but either incinerated or downcycled into lower value products.