Tesco has been forced to halve its food waste reduction figures after admitting that tens of thousands of tonnes of food waste it claimed had been sent for animal feed was instead sent to anaerobic digestion.
The supermarket chain, which has been vocal about transparency on food waste reporting, has corrected its food waste figures from 45% between 2016 to 2017 and 2022 to 2023, to just 18%.
Tesco told The Grocer it had “terminated” the contract of its food waste processor following an audit at the end of last year and has launched an investigation.
The retailer’s quality, technical and sustainability director Claire Lorains said: “While anaerobic digestion can have a role in recovery of energy and avoids food going to landfill, under the food waste hierarchy, we count food going to anaerobic digestion as waste.
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“As we had worked with our former processor over a number of years, we believe it is right to exclude animal feed from our data.
“We are therefore withdrawing our previously reported food waste data, and we expect our reduction this year will be similarly affected.”
Tesco reported more than 35,000 tonnes of food waste in the UK last year.
The findings are a blow to CEO Ken Murphy, who in September called on the government and retailers to focus on food waste data.
The supermarket chain became one of the first UK food retailers to align its executive pay performance targets to key sustainability measures in 2022 as it unveiled plans to halve food waste in its own operations by 2025.
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