Tesco trialling scheme to give charities unsold food

Tesco is trialling a scheme to give away unsold food at the end of each day to charities such as homeless hostels and children’s breakfast clubs.

The supermarket giant revealed it threw away 55,400 tonnes of food in the last year, of which 30,000 tonnes could otherwise have been eaten.

The food most commonly thrown away was from the bakery, followed by fresh fruit and vegetables and convenience items like pre-packaged sandwiches and salads.

It is trialling an app in partnership with UK food redistribution charity FareShare and Irish social enterprise FoodCloud that will allow store managers to alert charities to the amount of surplus food they have at the end of each day.

The charity will then confirm it wants the food, collect if from the store and use it for meals for those in need.

Beneficiaries will include homeless hostels, women’s refuges and breakfast clubs for disadvantaged children.

The scheme is already in place at Tesco stores in Ireland, and will be piloted in 10 Tesco stores across the UK.

Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis said: “No-one wants to throw away food which could otherwise be eaten.

“We don’t throw away much food in our own operations but even the 1% we do throw away amounts to 55,400 tonnes.

“To reduce this amount even further, we’ll be working in partnership with FareShare FoodCloud to ensure any food left unsold in our stores at the end of each day is given to local charities.

“This is potentially the biggest single step we’ve taken to cut food waste, and we hope it marks the start of eliminating the need to throw away edible food in our stores.”

FareShare chief executive Lindsay Boswell said: “We understand that customers get angry when they see food being wasted in their local store.

“Our partnership with Tesco means we are already able to access surplus food from their supply chain, distribution centres and dotcoms.”

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