ICELAND is giving away FREE food in some online deliveries.
It’s part of a scheme to tackle waste, where products nearing the end of their shelf life will be offered up free of charge rather than being thrown away.
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Brits supposedly end up throwing away a fifth of their grocery shopping, so the supermarket is hoping to tackle the environmental issue as well as save shoppers a few pennies.
The scheme is available across all 1,000 of the Iceland’s sites so anybody eligible for Iceland home deliveries will be able to benefit from the freebies.
But bagging the free food is technically a case of pot luck, and you won’t be able to chose things specifically because they are out-of-date.
Instead, you’ll shop like normal and place an order, but before your delivery is sent out, Iceland will inform you of any “Free on Last Day of Life” products, and then you won’t be charged for the price of that item.
Richard Walker, Managing Director at said: “We know that shelf life plays a big role in the creation of surplus food so we to have find an innovative way to combat this within our stores and via our online shopping.”
“Our Free on Last Day of Life scheme not only helps reduce food waste but also supports our customers.
“We know cost is key to many of our shoppers and this new initiative allows us to offer them the opportunity to reduce their weekly shopping bills as well as helping to reduce food waste.”
Other supermarkets run similar schemes like Tesco’s partnership with food-waste app Olio, while Morrisons has teamed up with the Too Good To Go app, to offer shoppers a chance to pick up discounted food that’s near its sell-by-date.
But when the Iceland delivery packers get picking for your order in-store, they’ll only add any products that are close to their sell-by dates if they’re’s no fresher products available.
So sometimes you might find that none of your shopping gets refunded, but you will have plenty of longer-life groceries.
It’s worth keeping in mind then that if you do get any of the Free on Last Day of Life products, you’ll likely have to use them up quick or freeze them otherwise they could spoil.
If they go to waste, you’ll end up having to re-purchase the product anyway, so you won’t make a saving.
A trial of the Free on Last Day of Life scheme was launched in 40 stores over the summer.
More than 17,000 items given away for free during the process and on average customers a refund of £1.58 per order.
You won’t find any chilled, fresh, cakes, bread or morning goods refunded as part of the scheme though as they aren’t included.
A number of supermarkets already run coloured sticker reductions on products that are close to their sell-by date in-store, which can be a great way for shoppers to make a saving.
But when placing an online order there’s no way to meticulously chose items from the shelves, so you can’t usually apply the hack to your virtual browsing.
Iceland’s new scheme will do this for you though if necessary, plus delivery is free to get your items sent to your home.
But you’ll have to spend the minimum order spend of £40 but none of the refunds you receive will impact this as they’ll come after you’ve spent that amount.
I rummaged through bins and nabbed £725 worth of fancy food – I got nearly 100 loaves of bread and nothing was past its used by date
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