Tesco reaches milestone of 10 million meals donated to community groups across Ireland

Tesco has announced that it has reached a monumental 10 million meals donated through its Tesco Surplus Food Donations programme which uses its food waste in a positive way

Retailer Tesco has announced that it reached a monumental 10 million meals donated through its Tesco Surplus Food Donations programme, in partnership with FoodCloud. These meals have supported over 350 local community groups across Ireland, including family resource centres, soup kitchens, youth services, homeless organisations, meals on wheels and many more.

Commenting on the momentous milestone, Kari Daniels, CEO of Tesco Ireland said: “At Tesco, we have no time for waste. We believe it’s simply not right that perfectly edible surplus food should go to waste when there are people in our communities who need it.

“We are proud to have been the first Irish retailer to launch a national surplus food donations programme with FoodCloud, working together to achieve a common goal that no good food goes to waste. Today, our partnership with FoodCloud celebrates a monumental milestone of reaching over 10 million meals donated to more than 350 community groups across Ireland, since 2014. This milestone has surpassed all expectations but shows what a difference we can make when we come together to work towards a better future.”

Donations

On Christmas Eve, FoodCloud organised volunteers from over 75 causes including Cheeverstown House and Cope Galway to collect donations from Tesco stores and redistribute them to those in need for Christmas Day. These donations included Christmas turkeys, hams, seasonal vegetables and fruit, which helped to ensure that these families had a Christmas meal to enjoy.

FoodCloud’s Dublin and Cork Rescue Projects also ran on Christmas Eve, powered by vans donated by Tesco. Individual volunteers drove the Tesco GHS vans to collect food donations from stores in both cities and dropped them directly to the many worthy causes in time for redistribution to families and those in need.

Tesco Ireland also donated seven decommissioned Grocery Home Shopping vans to FoodCloud, fully replacing a fleet donated to them in 2017. This fleet of vans assists FoodCloud in its life-changing work to reduce food poverty across Ireland.

Impact

Speaking about the successful partnership with Tesco, Aoibheann O’Brien, co-founder of FoodCloud, said: “FoodCloud’s first-ever store trial took place with one Tesco Ireland store back in October 2013. FoodCloud had six charity-partners at that time. The idea that this partnership would reach a milestone of the equivalent of 10 million meals was unimaginable.

“The impact that Tesco have had through their food donations programme has been transformative. Not only in supporting over 350 charitable causes in communities all over Ireland but in connecting people through food — be it through their colleagues, their customers, their charity partner contacts and the many volunteers who support to make the donations possible every single day. To everyone at Tesco, on behalf of FoodCloud and our charity partners all over Ireland, we want to say an enormous thank you.”

The 10 million meals donated have saved 4,236 tonnes of perfectly edible food from waste. These donations have an estimated food value of over €12,708,874, allowing charitable causes to save on costs associated with their food bills to invest in much-needed additional support services. The knock-on effects of these donations have also had positive benefits from an environmental impact perspective too. By redistributing this food instead of wasting it, Tesco has saved 13,514,436kgs of carbon. This is the equivalent amount of CO2 emissions generated from 1,460 homes’ energy use for just one year.

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