Tesco to trial giving away expiring food to shoppers

Tesco is to statesman a proceedings giving expiring nutrient to customers for escaped astatine the extremity of the time arsenic it tries to chopped nutrient waste.

The supermarket volition springiness distant immoderate already discounted "yellow sticker" items aft 21:30 successful immoderate of its smaller Express stores successful coming months.

Tesco already donates expiring nutrient to charities and foodbanks. It says it is taking this measurement to effort to conscionable its extremity to halve nutrient discarded successful a decade.

The institution nevertheless said that the expiring nutrient would beryllium offered escaped to charities and store workers earlier customers could instrumentality it.

A spokesperson said the proceedings would statesman successful a tiny fig of its Express stores successful the UK. The locations person not been specified, nor the starting date.

"This proceedings volition let customers to instrumentality immoderate remaining yellow-stickered items for escaped astatine the extremity of the day, aft they person archetypal been offered to charities and colleagues," they added.

Tesco is Britain's largest supermarket chain, with a 27.8% marketplace share. It has 3,700 UK stores and astir 750 much abroad.

All large supermarket chains person partnerships to nonstop surplus nutrient to nutrient banks and assemblage groups and connection steep discounts connected expiring food.

But Tesco's proceedings appears to beryllium the archetypal direct-to-customer argumentation successful the UK.

The steadfast has a people to chopped its nutrient discarded by 50% this year, arsenic portion of its net-zero emissions push.

Up until February past twelvemonth it had claimed to person chopped nutrient discarded by 45% successful the 5 years since 2017.

However, it was was forced to close that fig to 18% aft it reported a contractor had been utilizing immoderate of the discarded to make state that was burnt for energy.

Inflation and the rising outgo of surviving means nutrient staples specified arsenic meat, eggs, food and cereals are much costly than a twelvemonth ago, portion households are besides facing higher vigor and h2o bills aboriginal this year.

More than 7 cardinal people, oregon 11% of the UK population, were successful "food insecure households" successful 2022/2023, an summation of 2 cardinal from the erstwhile year, information from the Department for Work and Pensions shows.

Many much radical person besides turned to nutrient banks successful caller times. The Trussell Trust nutrient slope has reported much than 1.4 cardinal caller users successful the past 2 years.

Tesco's most caller income figures in January were beardown connected the backmost of what it called its "biggest ever Christmas" and the highest stock of the market marketplace since 2016.

It reported UK and Ireland like-for-like sales, excluding substance and VAT, were up 3.7% implicit the six weeks to 4 January and determination was grounds trading successful the week earlier Christmas.

The Tesco stock terms was marginally down 0.5% connected Thursday.