Tesco expands charity food scheme

Tesco, the UK's biggest grocer, is expanding a scheme which gives unsold food to charities from warehouses to include some local stores.

Leftover food from 10 of its UK stores will now also be available to local charities through the UK food redistribution charity Fare Share.

Tesco said of the 55,400 tonnes of food it threw away in the last year, 30,000 tonnes could have been eaten.

Most of this is currently used for animal feed.

Tesco has been working with Fare Share to donate surplus food since 2012.

Bakery items, fruit and vegetables, and convenience items such as sandwiches and salads make up most of the shop wastage.

It is trialling an app with UK food redistribution charity Fare Share and Republic of Ireland social enterprise Food Cloud, that will allow store managers to inform charities of the amount of surplus food held at the end of each day.

Beneficiaries will include homeless hostels, women's refuges and the children's clubs.

'Cutting food waste'

The scheme is already in place at Tesco stores in the Republic of Ireland.

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

"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."

In April, Tesco reported the worst results in its history, with a record statutory pre-tax loss of £6.4bn for the year to the end of February.

That compares with annual pre-tax profit of £2.26bn a year earlier.