4th Jun 2015 10:32
LONDON (Alliance News) - Tesco PLC Thursday said it has partnered with UK food redistribution charity FareShare and Irish social enterprise FoodCloud, to trial the FareShare FoodCloud app in the UK which will be used to redistribute unsold food from Tesco stores to charities.
Tesco said that 55,400 tonnes of food were wasted within its operations last year, around 30,000 tonnes of which could otherwise have been eaten.
With the FareShare FoodCloud app, Tesco store managers will be able to alert charities to the amount of surplus food they have at the end of each day. The charity will then confirm if it wants the food, pick it up from the store and turn it into meals for those in need.
Beneficiaries will come from the charities FareShare works with, including homeless hostels, women?s refuges and breakfast clubs for disadvantaged children, Tesco said, while FoodCloud will supply the technology.
The scheme is already in place in Ireland and will now be piloted in ten Tesco stores around the UK.
?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,? Tesco Chief Executive Dave Lewis said in a statement.
?We understand that customers get angry when they see food being wasted in their local store. We do too and that is why we have spent 20 years developing our successful charity redistribution model," FareShare Chief Executive Lindsay Boswell said.
?Our work in Ireland means that over 300 charities have already benefited from using the platform. It has helped us create a robust model that we have translated for the UK market," FoodCloud Co-founder Iseult Ward added.
Shares in Tesco were trading down 0.6% at 209.25 pence Thursday morning.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected] @KarolinaAllNews
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