Britain’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, is tackling food wastage problem through turning surplus baguettes and batons into new bread products.
Baguettes and batons are among the UK’s most popular bread products, yet also the two food items resulting in the highest wastage at the supermarket.
Tesco now plans to reduce that waste figure dramatically through launching bread pudding and olive oil crostini lines, using the surplus baguettes and batons.
If the initiation is successful, and the products are rolled out across the UK stores of the chain, it would mean that about 40 percent of the supermarket’s in-store bakery baguette and baton waste are being cut.
According to the food waste action charity WRAP, surplus bread is one of the biggest waste problems facing food retailers, especially with the freshly baked lines.
Its most recent figures show that surplus bakery products account for nearly a third (67500 tonnes) of the UK’s total retail food waste.
David Moon, Head of Business Collaboration at WRAP, said, “This initiative by Tesco is an example of a simple solution to a common problem. Using surpluses in store to make a delicious new product saves good food from spoiling, and reduces the cost of waste to the business.”
“Bread is also the second most wasted food in the home and every single day, as a nation, we waste one million loaves.”
The new bakery lines are being sold at 24 Tesco stores across the UK.
Another notable similar successful food waste saving scheme by Tesco uses surplus grapes to make a new gin called HYKE.
Besides utilizing food waste to making new products, Tesco reveals in its food waste data, 63 percent more food was redistributed to charities, community groups, colleagues and animal feeds.
The retailer has halved the amount of food safe for human consumption going to energy recovery as compared to the year of 2018, with 51 percent decrease, and is now more than 80 percent of the way towards its target that no food safe for human consumption goes to waste.
These initiations led the amount of food going to waste in Tesco’s UK operations reduce by 17 percent to 44,297 (0.45 per cent sales) as compared to the previous year.
