Smell-By Labels To Sniff Out Unnecessary Food Waste

Food waste initiative Too Good To Go today launches its Nose Sense campaign – cutting the nonsense around confusing date labelling on foods. With this, it unveils new Smell-By labels – a series of scratch-n-sniff stickers to help consumers let their nose dictate if their food is Too Good To Go, or if it is actually inedible.

660k tonnes of food is needlessly wasted in the UK alone, and this number has barely changed since 2012. Much of this is down to a lack of understanding of what different date labels on food mean. This campaign encourages use of our senses – from nostrils to plain common sense – as a better guide to when food is no longer edible.

Too Good To Go’s Smell By labels are scratch n’ sniff – containing the scents that four very-popular but hugely-wasted foods give off when they are no longer edible. Half of Brits simply obey the date label and only one third think the likes of eggs are edible past the date label, but by “nose-training” ourselves on these key smells, consumers will avoid using Best Before date as gospel, helping to prevent the £625million of these four foods alone that are unnecessarily wasted each year.

The labels currently cover these staple fridge and store cupboard ingredients: eggs, juice, beer and oats:

Too Good To Go hopes that a better understanding of the smells that four of the most widely-used Best Before foods give out when off, will save them from being thrown out purely based by their date – a common-sense shortcut in evaluating when food is truly off.

To help create permanent behaviour change, ensure authority, and add a touch of flair to proceedings, Too Good To Go has partnered with the World’s First S’Mellier, Dariush Alavi⁵. With a decade of independent scent expertise, as well as having nostrils insured for £1million and a spiffing wardrobe, his nostril superpowers were deployed to help prove when these foods are still too good to go.

The intention is for these labels to form part of a broader education initiative by Too Good To Go – firstly to ensure producers use the right food labels on products, but also to encourage greater consumer awareness around what the different food labels mean to help tackle the food waste problem.

Jamie Crummie, Co-Founder of Too Good To Go says: “Our love for food is stronger than ever since lockdown, but the food waste issue hurts both the environment and our pockets. Our mission is to help everyone fight food waste together. We want labelling to be clearer across the board, but also to help consumers better understand when they really must throw food away – and these Smell By labels are a vital part of that journey.”

Scratch-n-sniff technologies have a history in advising consumers on how to determine particular smells. While often associated with rewards at schools, these cards have even been used to help households identify the smell of a gas leak.