The UK’s food waste mountain is being made worse by consumers’ failure to follow storage advice and their misplaced confidence in their ability to prolong the life of popular food stuffs.
That is the conclusion of a major survey of 4,000 consumers undertaken by waste advisory body WRAP, which found 61 per cent of people mistakenly believe that removing food from packaging will extend its lifespan, despite the opposite being true.
The survey revealed that people have a high degree of confidence in how they store their food, which means that only 22 per cent look at retailers’ guidance on how to best store food to maximise life spans, while only 13 per cent regard packaging as having a useful protective role to play in the home.
The net result is that significant numbers of people were found to be storing bread in the fridge, despite the fact that it makes it go stale six times faster than storing it in a cool cupboard. Similarly, large numbers of people were found to be storing apples at room temperature, despite the fact keeping them in their packaging and storing them in the fridge tends to make them last two weeks longer.
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