A British supermarket is joining the move to end food wastage.
The Co-op has signed an agreement with the charity FareShare to release 500 tonnes of food which would otherwise be binned. This is to be composed of surplus vegetables, fruit and ready meals as well as chilled goods such as yoghurt and meat.
This should start to make a dent in the 15 million tonnes of food destroyed each year in Britain, the largest amount of any EU country.
The major supermarket chains contribute 1.3% to that total, but the vast majority comes from households.
Tesco had earlier pledged to help FareShare after admitting it disposed of 30,000 tonnes a year of food still within its use-by date.
The Co-op pledge move comes after a trial run successfully provided 32 tonnes of goods from a depot in Derbyshire to charity within 10 weeks. It says the items contributed towards 76,192 meals for vulnerable people.
Nine depots across Britain will join the initiative starting this week. Together it is believed they could provide 500 tonnes of food which should make more than one million meals in 2016.
FareShare centres will distribute the food to people in need, such as those in hostels for homeless people, refuge centres for women and breakfast clubs for disadvantaged children.
The Co-op’s chief executive noted there would be a huge human benefit and “significant positive environmental impacts” resulting for diverting produce from anaerobic digesters.
In France this year legislation was actually introduced to ban supermarkets from destroying good food.
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