Supermarkets Criticized for Wasting Food, but British Tesco Has a Solution

Ahead of the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, celebrated this September 29 for the first time, the largest British retail chain Tesco joined forces with the food sharing app Olio in a campaign aiming to reduce the wasting of food.

Thousands of people are already providing food and other vital supplies to their neighbors through the app, but this is the first national partnership with the large chain of supermarkets. All 2,700 Tesco markets will take part in the project. They will be visited by 8,000 Olio volunteers looking for food nearing expiration date. Once the products are gathered, they are immediately uploaded to the app, making them ready to be delivered to everyone who registers for free.

The national campaign of Tesco and Olio follows a successful six-month test in 250 stores with the largest amounts of surplus food, including fresh fruit and vegetables and baked products. In half a year, 36 tons of food, that is, 195,000 products, were shared through the app, half of which was shared within less than an hour of being uploaded to the app.

Demand for food banks to grow

The partnership of these two companies is a good system for solving the growing problem of food waste. Globally, a third of produced food is thrown away, and in Great Britain, households generate 50% of the waste. It is estimated that food worth GBP 15 billion is thrown away annually, costing an average household 730 pounds. The criticism is also targeted at supermarkets, due to the large amounts of food that is wasted instead of being sent to food banks. The largest British food bank network, the Trussell Trust, has warned that, due to the layoffs caused by the pandemic, the poverty rate in the UK will double by Christmas, leading to an increase in the demand for food banks.

Tesco, which already cooperates with charity organizations, through which it donates 2 million meals a month, says that they are proud of their efforts to reduce food waste and that they are dedicated to not wasting a single piece of quality food.

This is not Tesco's first circular economy campaign. Together with Loop, Tesco recently launched a pilot project of multi-use packaging, which enables the customers to refill a product instead of buying a new one every time in a new single-use packaging.

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Olio

Loop

food waste

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International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste

food surplus

food sharing app

food nearing expiration date

food donation

multi use packaging