M&S has launched an investigation after a vigilante social media ‘food waste inspector’ documented wheelie bins full of in-date food behind one of its stores.
A video posted this week on Instagram by Food_waste_inspector documents eight bins full of unsold food and flowers outside an M&S store, as well as sacks full of bakery items.
All the food products in the bins shown in the video – including sliced meat, whole chicken, potatoes and bakery items – were within date by several days.
“There are people going hungry right now and struggling to put food on the table, and supermarkets are doing this. This is diabolical,” Food_waste_inspector says in the video.
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On its website, M&S states its “priority is to ensure 100% of our edible surplus food ends up on a person’s plate and we have a target to achieve this by 2025”.
One of its food waste innovations, shared on the supermarket’s sustainability webpages, is “turning any unsold baguettes and boules from our in-store bakeries – which are baked fresh daily – into frozen garlic bread at the end of each day with an extended shelf life of 30 days”.
An M&S spokeswoman told The Grocer: “It’s clear that at these stores something has gone wrong and we’re investigating that right now.
“We have a clear process to manage food waste in store. It starts with the right stock in the right place at the right time. Our stores check products regularly and where there’s a surplus, they should be reducing the price in good time to help sell it before the date is up. Food that’s still unsold and edible, we donate to local community groups through our partner Neighbourly,” the spokeswoman added.
“We can also give it to colleagues or surprise our customers with a treat,” they said.
The Instagram channel has posted several instances of bins full of in-date food outside M&S stores. The supermarket has seemingly responded to the exposure.
In another video – which purports to have been filmed at M&S in Harrow – Food_waste_inspector says that since he started exposing the food waste, the store had put padlocks on the bins. In another he says staff at M&S in Chiswick had been ordered to keep food bins within the store. “The food waste continues but it’s out of sight, hidden away,” he says.
The west London man – who wants to remain anonymous so his work can continue – says he was urged to start the channel after multiple store managers refused to match the donations he was making to in-store food charity collections.
“I said to myself ‘let’s see what they bin’, and to this day I am shocked at what I come across and continue to see,” he told The Grocer.
The man – who has close to 75,000 followers on Instagram and 64,000 on TikTok – urged M&S to partner with more food redistribution organisations like Olio and Too Good To Go and added that “they need to reduce food much earlier and for a lot more”.
“They would reduce, say, a chicken that was £14 down to £13.20 knowing it’s going to expire that day. The price needs to drop a lot more than this and a lot earlier,” he said.
The man has vowed to remove all posts showing waste “once I know I’ve made a difference, but I have to see change before this happens”.
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