Supporting our communities
We continue to invest in our food surplus redistribution programmes, working in partnership with food banks, regional charities and food-sharing groups.
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Good food should never go to waste. Yet all too often, food that is perfectly good to eat ends up being thrown away.
In fact, around one-third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted. As well as a missed opportunity when millions worldwide go hungry every day, this is also a serious environmental problem. Even if food isn't consumed, the greenhouse gases (GHGs) created by producing, transporting and storing it have still been emitted.
"The UN estimates that as a result, food waste accounts for 8-10% of global GHGs. As their its report says: “If food waste were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions."
The good news is that food waste is a problem that can be solved. Across Tesco, we are working to do just that.
Our food waste hierarchy
At Tesco, we use WRAP’s hierarchy to reduce food surplus and waste where we can, and make the best possible use of it where we can’t.
Our food waste strategy
Our food waste strategy is focused around four action areas:
Looking to the future
Based on what we’ve learned so far, here’s how our industry can accelerate its efforts to eliminate food waste:
- Keep on moving up the food waste hierarchy, ensuring as much surplus food as possible is redistributed
- Embrace new technology, ideas and innovations, for example using insects fed on food waste to replace soy-based animal feeds
- Bring transparency to the issue, helping growers to take action and supporting mandatory reporting of food waste
- Make reducing household food waste a collective national mission
How we're working to reduce food waste
No food waste from our own UK operations has been sent direct to landfill since 2009
Launched charity partnerships with FareShare, the UK’s longest running food redistribution charity and The Trussell Trust, which supports a network of foodbanks across the UK
Became the first retailer to publicly report on food waste in own operations
Removed Buy One Get One Free deals on the most perishable fruit and veg
Became a founding member of Champions 12.3, a coalition of executives from governments, businesses, farmer groups and more dedicated to accelerating progress in food waste
Introduced Community Food Connection, a new store initiative to donate surplus food to charities and communities
Introduced our Perfectly Imperfect range to stores to ensure wonky food never gets wasted
Announced ground-breaking partnerships with suppliers to Target, Measure, Act in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goal on food waste
Our businesses in Central Europe and Ireland started measuring and publicly reporting their food waste data
Removed best before dates on over a hundred fruit and veg items to help customers reduce food waste at home
Launched our Colleague Shop across all UK stores giving colleagues the opportunity to take food approaching its expiry date
Became the first retailer to partner with food sharing app Olio
Launched our inaugural ‘Use up Day’ campaign to help encourage households to cook a meal using up food already in their kitchen
Accelerated our ambition to halve food waste, bringing our target five years forward to 2025
Launched Tesco Exchange, an online marketplace which matches suppliers who have too much of a product
Published the ‘Hidden Waste’ report in partnership with WWF
Rolled out ‘Reduced in Price, Just as Nice’ areas – now in over 300 stores
Removed use by dates on a range of our own brand dairy products
Our ambition to halve food waste across our own operation
Our target to halve food waste across our supply chains
Our target to reach net zero emissions across our supply chain and products
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