Budapest saved an amount of food from Tesco stores equal to one year’s food waste

Since 2014, 100 million portions of food have been delivered to the needy from Tesco stores.As part of the daily process, food left over in Tesco stores, but still suitable for human consumption, goes to those in need. In 10 years, as many donations were received as the amount of the combined annual unnecessary food waste of the residents of Budapest, that is, in principle preventable. That is, Tesco “credited” the one-year food waste of about 1,680,000 people in the last decade.[1]

“Our primary goal is to reduce the amount of food surplus as much as possible. For this, we use advanced traffic forecasting and ordering procedures, as well as a price discount system set up for products with close expiration dates. If we are unable to sell the food, we primarily pass it on to charitable organizations, including, for example, the Ecumenical Aid Organization or the Hungarian Food Association, to local communities, state-run, civil, church, and local government organizations. The rest is donated to animal shelters and used in a biogas plant. Only the remaining products become waste. We are proud that, according to our latest report, only 0.67 percent of the food sold in our stores ended up in landfills. With our good practices, we can not only help people in difficult situations living in the vicinity of our stores, but also reduce our emissions: by more than 120,000 tons since the 2016/17 financial year,”

said Nóra Hevesi, Tesco-Global Zrt. communications manager.