MORE than 15,000 meals in Newport have been prevented from going to waste in a year – thanks to a partnership between Tesco and OLIO.
The meals have been saved thanks to the partnership between the supermarket and food sharing app – which allows unsold surplus food that is fit for consumption to be given to people in the community rather than being thrown away.
Tesco partnered with the app last August and in the past year, 15,583 meals have been saved from going to waste in Newport alone, with 179,917 across Wales. More than five million meals have been distributed across the UK thanks to the partnership.
OLIO Food Waste Heroes collect food when charities are unable to do so and take it back to their homes. The items are then uploaded straight to the OLIO app and are ready to be re-distributed free to those living nearby and to community groups. OLIO app users are able to pick the items up from an agreed contact-free collection point.
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Claire De Silva, Tesco’s head of communities, said: “Tesco is committed to tackling food waste, and we were confident our partnership with OLIO would help with that, but its impact has exceeded all our expectations.
“For our partnership to have diverted more than five million surplus meals from going to waste shows the strength of the partnership between our store colleagues and OLIO’s food waste heroes.”
OLIO co-founder, Saasha Celestial-One, said: “Our partnership with Tesco has been a huge success this year, and we’re incredibly proud to have delivered so many meals that would have otherwise been wasted to communities across the UK. Tesco has been a true pioneer.
“But our work is far from done. We hope this partnership encourages other businesses to follow suit and consider how they can take a more proactive approach to minimising waste and supporting local communities. Just imagine what we could achieve if every business followed their lead.”
The partnership between the supermarket and app builds on Tesco’s existing food surplus donations programme, including its community food connection scheme with FareShare. That scheme has provided more than 120 million meals of food to charities and community groups across the UK since its 2016 inception.
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