Member Article

Pontarddulais Tesco store has donated more than 100,000 meals to local groups.

Tesco’s Pontarddulais store has donated more than 100,000 meals-worth of surplus food to local charities and community groups, the supermarket has revealed.

The first superstore in Wales to reach this milestone, it is one of 18 Tesco stores across the UK which have donated 100,000 meals of food that would have otherwise gone to waste through the supermarket’s Community Food Connection Scheme, run in conjunction with food charity FareShare.

Tesco recently marked the fourth anniversary of the scheme, which has now provided more than 40 million meals-worth of food.

Food from the Pontarddulais store has helped to support a number of local charities and good causes in the town, including Hope House - Teen Challenge South Wales. Alicia Ward, Centre Manager at Hope House, said the food donated by the store had made a real difference to their work.

“At Hope House we are catering for more than 30 women, providing three meals a day. The FareShare collections have really helped us with the catering budget by providing substantial ingredients for those meals, along with some nice extras such as fruit and cakes and even bouquets of flowers.

“Once the staff at Pontarddulais Tesco became aware of our specific needs they have been very helpful by having the collections all ready for our staff to pick up.”

Tesco’s Head of Community Alec Brown congratulated colleagues at the Pontarddulais Superstore for helping to make the scheme such a success.

“Community Food Connection has gone from strength to strength over the past four years,” he said. “We have rolled out the scheme to all of our 2,600-plus stores and the fact that our Pontarddulais store has now donated 100,000 meals-worth of food shows the difference the scheme can make.

“Their efforts mean that thousands of meals-worth of food that would otherwise have gone to waste have instead gone to help feed people through the amazing work of community groups and charities here in Pontarddulais.

“The success of the scheme has helped us to significantly reduce the food waste from our stores and we want to make sure even more of our food surplus goes to charity and community groups in the year ahead.”

FareShare Chief Executive Lindsay Boswell also congratulated the store on donating so many meals through the scheme.

“Around a third of all the food that is grown in the world goes to waste, so we are proud of our partnership with Tesco, which has allowed us to divert thousands of tonnes of food to feed people rather than going to waste,” he said.

“At FareShare we work closely with some 7,000 groups that now receive surplus food from Tesco, and our community coordinators see week-in week-out the difference that the surplus food is making in settings such as community centres, pensioners’ lunch clubs, groups helping the homeless and children’s breakfast clubs. The Pontarddulais store is a great example of how the scheme can both tackle food waste and provide food to support the work of groups who are at the heart of their local community.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tesco .