Tesco has vowed to do more to tackle food waste after it was caught throwing skiploads of surplus products away.
The admission came after bin-diver Rufus Pearce, who lives on leftovers he finds from supermarkets, told The Daily Mirror he found a “mountain” of bread, meat, cakes, vegetables and chocolate outside a Tesco store.
Pearce took a video of the goods he found dumped outside the store in Cardiff, and said he found it “incredible” to see food wasted, most of it still in-date.
The 34-year-old said the food he found on Christmas Eve could have been used to feed the hungry on Christmas Day.
“Tesco made a commitment last year to stop wasting so much food and to donate it to charities to help the homeless, but they’re still dumping it in bins,” Pearce told The Mirror.
In February last year, Tesco launched its food surplus redistribution initiative, Community Food Connection, which has since served more than five million meals to more than 3,300 community groups.
Tesco helped develop the nationwide scheme in partnership with FoodCloud and food redistribution charity FareShare, following a trial in Ireland.
The Grocer understands the store in question has not yet rolled out the Community Food Connection scheme.
“We’re committed to ensuring no food safe for human consumption should be wasted and have robust processes in place to prevent surplus food from being thrown away. Our Community Food Connection initiative, which provides surplus food to local charities across the UK, is already live in over 900 stores and we will be introducing it to the stores where these photographs were taken in the coming months,” said a Tesco spokesman.
No comments yet