Tesco today (4 June) launched what it claimed was a ground-breaking step to ensure edible food waste from its stores was redistributed to charities for human consumption.
It has partnered with UK food redistribution charity FareShare and Irish social enterprise FoodCloud to pilot a new strategy at 10 stores in the UK and across Ireland. It is trialling the FareShare FoodCloud app that enables store managers to alert charities to the amount of surplus food they have at the end of each day.
The charities will then confirm if they want the food and will collect it, without charge, and redistribute it to charities including homeless hostels, women’s refuges and breakfast clubs for disadvantaged children.
The announcement comes two weeks after The Grocer revealed Tesco has thrown away 55,400 tonnes of food from its UK stores and distribution centres in the past year - 30,000 tonnes of which could otherwise have been 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,” said Tesco CEO Dave Lewis. “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 had a long-standing partnership with Tesco, said the charity’s CEO Lindsay Boswell, adding the development of the FareShare FoodCloud was a natural evolution of this.
“We understand customers get angry when they see food being wasted in their local store,” she said. “We do too and that is why we have spent 20 years developing our successful charity redistribution model. 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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