Tesco’s food waste falls by 17%

Tesco works with FareShare to donate surplus food from its stores to those in need

Supermarket giant Tesco has revealed the amount of food going to waste in its stores has fallen by 17% in the last year.

More food was redistributed to charities, community groups, colleagues and animal feed with the retailer halving the amount of food safe for human consumption going to energy recovery compared to last year (51% decrease).

The supermarket giant is now 81% of the way toward its target that no food safe for human consumption goes to waste. 

Over 12 months, Tesco sold around 10 million tonnes of food in the UK. A small fraction - 77,184 tonnes – (0.78%) remained unsold. Of this total, 32,887 tonnes was redistributed and stopped from going to waste.

Tesco works with FareShare to donate surplus food from its stores to those in need, and works with almost 7,000 charities and community groups.

Tesco CEO, and Chairman of Champions 12.3, Dave Lewis said: “Reducing food waste is a global challenge: one in nine people are going hungry whilst a third of the world’s food is wasted. This food waste has a huge environmental impact, creating unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions.

“Our food data shows we’re making progress in reducing food waste in our business. We set a challenging target that no food safe for human consumption would go to waste in our UK operations and we are now 81% of the way there.

"We call on other businesses to also report their food waste data; this is the only way that we’ll know whether the UK and the world is on course to reach SDG Target 12.3.”