Tesco cuts food waste with greener satsumas and clementines

Tesco has become the first UK supermarket to start selling perfectly ripe greener satsumas and clementines in order to help cut food waste.

The move has been prompted by recent higher early season temperatures in Spain where these easy peelers are grown which have slowed down the natural process by which the skin of the fruit turns orange.

Despite the skin being slightly green the fruit is still as perfectly sweet and as juicy as you’d find as when they turn orange.

Growers, in order to accelerate the colouring process, have been putting the easy peelers into a ripening room but this extra handling has led to a small amount of fruit being damaged and therefore going to waste.

By taking out this stage shoppers will also be able to benefit from the move as the fruit will have an extra shelf life of up to two days meaning less potential food waste in the home.

Tesco citrus buyer Debbie Lombaard said: “At the moment green easy peelers fall outside of the general quality specifications set by UK supermarkets but Tesco has made the leading move in order to cut down on food waste.

“As a result of this move to take out a handling stage in the journey from farm to fork shoppers will gain extra freshness for their satsumas and clementines.”

The fruit will be sold as ‘Perfectly Ripe Early Season Satsumas’ and will cost the same as orange coloured ones.

Satsumas, and other easy peelers as well as oranges, initially grow as a green fruit but change colour to orange as nights cool.

Over the last few years warmer Spanish temperatures in the early growing season for satsumas in September and October have remained higher into the autumn, delaying the natural process by which the fruit turns orange.

Links

https://www.tescoplc.com

Related posts

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.