Tesco has put back its target for halving food waste across its own operations by five years, after admitting it is still trying to recover from the over-reporting scandal of 2024.
In a revised target, announced yesterday in Tesco’s annual sustainability report, the retailer said it would aim to reduce food waste across its operations by 50% by 2030, in line with UN sustainability goals SDG 12.3.
Tesco has a reputation as the most transparent of all the supermarkets in reporting its food waste figures, and was the first to do so in 2013.
However, In January 2024 The Grocer revealed tens of thousands of tonnes of food waste the supermarket claimed to have eliminated from its operations had secretly been sent to anaerobic digestion.
The supermarket giant revealed at the time it had “terminated” the contract of its food waste processor.
It was forced to correct its food waste reduction figure across its group operations from a claimed fall of 45% between 2016/17 and 2022/3 to just 18%.
The blow came a year after Tesco announced it was accelerating its plans to halve its operations’ food waste five years ahead of the Champions 12.3 and UN target, though at the time Tesco said its target against the 2016 baseline remained “unchanged”.
Tesco revealed yesterday it wasted 73,390 tonnes of food in 2025/26, well over twice amount it reported the year before the scandal.
The waste accounts for 0.5% of all food handled by Tesco, with total surplus reported yesterday of over 142,000 tonnes, of which more than 50,0000 tonnes was redistributed to charities.
“Food waste remains one of the most significant environmental and societal challenges facing the food system,” the report said. “Around a third of all food production is lost or wasted, contributing to an estimated 8%-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“Meaningful progress, therefore, relies on industry wide collaboration with suppliers, redistribution partners, policymakers and other suppliers.”
It added: “Despite our best efforts and the support of our colleagues across the business, we missed our group-wide target to halve food waste across our own operations by December 2025, recording a decrease of 24%.
“This is an improvement from 14% in the previous year.
“As previously reported, the target was missed primarily following an internal review which showed that food in the UK we believed was being processed for animal feed was in fact going to anaerobic digestion.”
Tesco opened the doors of a ground-breaking new new animal feed production facility in Chelveston, Northamptonshire, in April, in response to the scandal. It said it was a “step-change” in its attempts to create a circular economy in the UK food system.
It said the new facility, owned and operated by its new food waste partner RenEco, would “revolutionise” how it handled surplus.
Tesco’s reported yesterday said its Booker and central Europe operations had, however, met the 2025 50% reduction targets.
The supermarket also called for the supply chain and policymakers to up their game on food redistribution.
As reported by The Grocer yesterday, under-fire prime minister Keir Starmer this week announced a major new government commitment to triple the volume of surplus food made available for redistribution, as part of a national programme to tackle food waste and food poverty.
The strategy brings together an unprecedented coalition of retailers, manufacturers and NGOs.
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