Supermarket giant Tesco has revealed the amount of food it has destroyed and has promised to redistribute edible food in future.
Tesco said that the food waste generated by the supermarket increased to nearly 60,000 tonnes last year. This was a 4% increase over 2015.
Beer, wine and spirits as well as bakery items took the blame for the increase.
Tesco first published its food waste figures in 2013, but remains the only major supermarket to do so. Its CEO Dave Lewis says this transparency has helped it to identify problem areas and develop programmes to tackle waste.
He called for collective action in the industry to tackle food waste across the supply chain, starting with farms through to consumers’ homes, and said that companies should do more to redistribute surplus edible food to people in need.
“Tackling food waste makes sense for business, it will help people and our planet, and it’s also the right thing to do,” he said.
Tesco said it has tried eliminate waste by several means, including cutting back on the time food is in the supply chain and creating “Perfectly Imperfect” sales of “wonky” fruit and veg.
Now it says that by the end of 2017 it will redistribute edible products to charities.
Earlier this year the big four - Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons - signed a voluntary agreement to reduce food and drink waste by a fifth within the next decade.
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) estimates that 1.9m tonnes of food is wasted in the UK grocery supply chain every year.
