A NEW community scheme which aims to donate unsold food to charities in the area, has recently been launched in Tavistock Tesco.

The program, FareShare FoodCloud, is already in place at Tesco stores in Ireland and is currently being piloted in Tavistock as well as 11 other stores in the UK.

Partnered with UK food redistribution charity FareShare and social enterprise FoodCloud, Tesco is able to use the FareShare FoodCloud mobile application to alert a charity of the amount of surplus food at the end of each day.

The charity then confirms that it wants the food and picks it up, free of charge from the store and turns it into meals for those in need. Tesco Tavistock has so far donated more than 424kg of fresh food to charity; with an average meal calculated to be around 2.2kg in weight, that equates to over 900 meals.

One recipient of the food is Broadreach House, a Plymouth based charity that provides treatment and support for men and women who have been adversely affected by addiction.

Gina Dormer, chief executive at Broadreach House said: ‘This is the second week we have been involved with the scheme. For us to be a part of this scheme, which is an innovation, is great.

‘For a lot of residents, healthy eating and getting a balanced diet is really difficult because they are in the throes of addiction. We have been able to educate clients in cookery classes which is also really positive.

‘Any money that we have been able to save, from not buying as much food, is reinvested in the charity and for a drug and alcohol charity it is amazing because the nature of what we do is not mainstream.’

Broadreach House has a capacity of 70 residents and also runs a day service, meaning that people suffering from addiction can come along and receive a hot meal.

Gina added: ‘For some people one square meal a day is a massive help and our residents get three meals a day, meaning that none of the food is wasted and we are able to use it in an effective way.

‘The way in which we are welcomed and received into the store is very positive. The chefs love it too as it challenges them to make a meal out of the ingredients that are donated to us.’

Tesco Tavistock manager, Tris Sommervile said: ‘The guys in the shop are all very pleased to be part of the scheme as it’s really depressing to throw food away.

‘The original ten stores to take part in the scheme were chosen in area with an existing FareShare presence. We are the first new store to be included and the first new store to be opened this year.

‘From now on every new store opened will join the scheme, it is hoped that another 100 stores will join by Christmas. Since we began ten days ago we have donated food to seven different charities.

‘We have donated fresh bread, fruit, vegetables, eggs, which usually have around three or four days left on their use by date; we have also been donating flowers as well.’

Gina Dormer said: ‘The flowers are great because some of our residents will never receive flowers and having some in their room is wonderful, we also were able to give some to the care home next door to us.’

Tris Somervile added: ‘We have heard from the charities coming to collect that even if they don’t have a use for the flowers they can pass them on to local churches or hospices. Some of it is about the quality of life.’

‘The managers here were very keen to do it, it’s a very simple process and we have had no issues of people not wanting what we have got. There have also been discussions about taking the date we can donate food up to the use by date.

‘When Tesco make the decision to take the scheme into Plymouth we will be able to focus on charities from Tavistock and charities like Broadreach will be reallocated to a store nearer to them.’

Tris added that FoodCloud runs the app that allows stores to post donations and FareShare approves the charities, visiting them before they are able to take part in the scheme to ensure they will use the donations sensibly and have the equipment to do so.

He also said that Tesco do not have any waste that goes to landfill. Since 2009, stores have ‘reduced to clear’, selling foods at a lower price when approaching their expiry date.

All bakery waste is sent away to be converted into feed for livestock and if these options are not available energy is recovered from waste through anaerobic digestion or incineration.

Tris added: ‘The first day of the scheme we were scratching our heads thinking ‘How is this going to work?’

‘A couple of our customers have commented about how good the scheme is.

‘We will be advertising it more soon as we want to be seen as a benefit to the community. We also have a board in store which displays the percentage of customers that think the store is a benefit to the community, at the moment we are at 55% which is good considering the average for the company is 32%. We haven’t won the story yet but we are getting there!’