Its not just supermarkets either , its consumers as well , there is an enormous amount of food bought & wasted , we have all seen people at xmas time with trolleys packed to the rafters for a two day event but it is not just confined to once a year , in wealthy countries like ours domestic food waste is common place .
I’m not denying that tons probably gets thrown, I don’t have any knowledge about that but I do have knowledge that Morrisons donates some to food banks and charities. There’s quite a few charities who give food directly to the homeless in Leeds that get donations from Morrisons as they have posted thanking them lots of times. I know they donate things to FareShare too. They also sell boxes made up of out of date and almost out of date stuff through the Too Good To Go app. They are like rocking horse poo though and sell out within a few minutes of them being listed. I’ve never got one but I’ve seen photos of the contents from people I know who have. I’m not sure I’m a fan of it to be honest as I think people who don’t need them buy it for the lucky dip aspect and probably waste a lot of it as it is filled with repeated content such as multiple loaves of bread. I think if they yellow stickered it in the shop it would probably sell to people who would definitely use it. Morrisons also does a lot of charity work with schools in Bradford, for example every year they invite groups of kids to sing and treat them to a huge Christmas dinner with a take home chocolate hamper and fruit hamper for accompanying staff. They also donate an Easter Egg for every child in school each year. Maybe it’s because I’ve always worked in Bradford schools and it’s a Bradford company but they’ve always impressed me.
A hell of a lot of it goes to a company called ‘Saria’ who use waste food to make electricity. In fact, I know someone who got sacked from the Doncaster plant (formerly De Mulders) for taking some M&S strawberries home which were going to waste but looked perfectly ripe.
Correct Jamdrop...a friend organises a foodbank and they definitely get food from Morrison's....also M&S....there is only a limited demand so.they only take as much as they know they can use.
What we call ‘food banks’, where you need a referral to collect food from them, tend to not accept it as they have limited storage space and have policies to not accept fresh food (which is most of what supermarkets throw away). There are plenty of charities that give out food that do accept it though. That tends to be ones where they hand out food directly to the homeless or ones where they have certain days where they collect the food from the supermarkets and then have stalls for people to come and either take for free or make a donation/‘pay what you feel’. It is generally the informal ones where you don’t need a referral and anyone can access that deals with the fresh stuff. The referral ones are tinned and dried goods only and are a separate service.
Yes, I suspect a lot does get thrown if no-one offers to collect or distribute it. Whenever I’ve known someone phone up any of the supermarkets and ask for stuff they always have something to give and I guess if no one in an area does ask then it gets chucked. The problem is that you need someone willing to come up with the idea, have the time and transport to collect it, coolers to store it in, a way to advertise the services and then to actually give it out. Unsurprisingly, not a lot of people volunteer to do all that.
You wouldnt happen to know the details for those where they accept the fresh stuff do you? And it seems to me to be absolutely crazy that the more organised ones just won't accept fresh food when they've got people trying to donate it and people needing the food
This is the FareShare website that serves Barnsley and Leeds: https://www.fareshareyorkshire.org/contact-us/ There’s a ‘Give Food’ link in the menu area plus more information about what they do. They collect direct from companies that have surplus food. I’m not sure about smaller and individual companies in Barnsley, they tend to be advertised in local groups.
We tried fareshsre. They turned down 3 tonnes for fresh food with approximately 3 weeks shelf life on it too. Ended up being binned as literally no food banks that we tried wanted it.
Oh yeah I'd forgot they do fruit and veg. It's mainly M&S if I remember right. But yeah they didn't want ours the picky sods
Oh. Quite a few schools run stalls where parents can just take or leave a donation if they prefer (some prefer to pay a nominal amount). I know some would like to and don’t know how and some think it would be too much work and has no staff available to do it but I bet some would be very interested.
