Today’s Solutions: December 15, 2025

The British supermarket Morrisons has decided to remove “use-by” dates on milk packaging by the end of the month in an effort to save millions of pints of milk from being needlessly thrown away each year.

Instead, the supermarket is inviting their customers to use the traditional, age-old test to figure out whether milk is still good for consumption: the sniff test.

The UK chucks about 330,000 tons of usable milk every year, which according to numbers from 2018 provided by food waste charity Wrap, is about 7 percent of the nation’s total production. Most of the wasted milk is disposed of within the home, making it the third most-wasted food in the UK, championed only by potatoes and bread.

Morrisons asks their customers to check milk by holding the bottle to their nose. If it smells sour, then it’s likely spoiled. Customers can also look to see if the milk has curdled by seeing if lumps have formed. Keeping milk cool and securely cold as much as possible can help extend its life.

For now, the shift away from “use-by” dates will cover 90 percent of the supermarket’s home milk brands, including British and Scottish milks, Morrisons For Farmers milks, and Morrisons organic milks. Morrison has already removed “use-by” dates on some of its home brand yogurts and hard cheese ranges back in 2020.

“I am delighted that Morrisons is the first UK supermarket to take this important step to help reduce household food waste,” says Wrap’s chief executive Marcus Gover. “It shows real leadership and we look forward to more retailers reviewing date labels on their products and taking action.”

Solutions News Source Print this article
More of Today's Solutions

Scientists build first fully human bone marrow model to revolutionize blood d...

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a transformative leap for regenerative medicine, scientists have developed the first entirely human-engineered bone marrow system. This ...

Read More

7 cold and flu season mistakes doctors want you to quit making

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM You’ve heard the warnings: cold and flu season is no joke. But despite our best intentions (and fully ...

Read More

Three ways we can repurpose closed department stores

40 percent of US department stores have closed their doors in the past five years, but the question remains: what do we do with ...

Read More

Hubble takes beautiful image of galaxies “dancing”

The Hubble Space Telescope ventured into space over three decades ago in 1990, and has observed around 50,000 celestial bodies to date. During this ...

Read More