Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket has announced today that it is launching a new scheme to give every day’s unsold food to children’s breakfast clubs and homeless hostels.
Tesco reported that it threw away around 55,400 tonnes of food during the last year, however 30,000 tonnes of the food could have been eaten, with sandwiches, fruit and vegetables, convenience items and bakery items making up most of the waste.
The supermarket will be testing an app that will let store managers tell the charities how much food is held at the end of each day. The charities they will be teaming up with are Fare Share and Irish social enterprise Food Cloud.
Chief executive, Dave Lewis said: "No-one wants to throw away food which could otherwise be eaten," adding "We don't throw away much food in our own operations, but even the 1% we do throw away amounts to 55,400 tonnes.
"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."
