Retail giant Tesco has announced that it has cut food waste by 17% year-on-year in 2018 in its UK operations.
The retailer distributed 63% more food to charities, community groups, colleagues and animal feed during this period, according to Tesco's recently published, annual food waste data.
Tesco CEO, and chairman of champions 12.3, Dave Lewis, said, "Publicly reporting food data is crucial to delivering on this ambition. Our food data shows we’re making progress in reducing food waste in our business."
"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 are on course to reach Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3," Lewis added.
Other Objectives
It has also reduced the amount of food safe for human consumption going to energy recovery by 51% compared to the previous year.
Presently, it is 81% on its way to achieving its objective that no food safe for human consumption goes to waste.
In the past 12 months, Tesco sold around 10 million tonnes of food in the UK.
A small fraction amounting to around 77,184 tonnes (0.78%) remained unsold, out of which 32,887 tonnes was redistributed to prevent wastage.
'A Global Challenge'
According to Lewis, reducing food waste is a "global challenge."
"One in nine people is going hungry while a third of the world’s food is wasted. This food waste has a huge environmental impact, creating unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions," he explained.
Recently, Tesco also launched the Tesco Community Cookery School with Jamie Oliver, to help community groups to make the best use of the food waste donations.
The programme will offer training to over 1,000 community volunteers throughout the year.
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Dayeeta Das. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
