Food Waste Heroes in Linlithgow and Bo’ness have now shared over 18,663 meals

In August last year Tesco became the first supermarket to partner with the food sharing app, which provides unsold surplus food fit for consumption to people in the community and prevent it from being thrown away. 

In the first full year of the partnership OLIO’s network of more than 3,700 Food Waste Heroes across the UK helped to save 5.6 million meals from Tesco stores, with more than 72,000 people able to put the food to good use for their families and their local communities.

In Linlithgow and Boness, OLIO Food Waste Heroes have now shared 18,663 meals through the app.

Tesco head of communities, Claire De Silva said: “Tesco is committed to tackling food waste and we were confident our partnership with OLIO would help with that, but its impact has exceeded all our expectations. 

“For our partnership to have diverted more than 5 million surplus meals from going to waste shows the strength of the partnership between our store colleagues and OLIO’s Food Waste Heroes.” 

Saasha Celestial-One, co-founder of OLIO, said: “Our partnership with Tesco has been a huge success this year, and we’re incredibly proud to have delivered so many meals that would have otherwise been wasted to communities across the UK. Tesco has been a true pioneer.

“But our work is far from done. We hope this partnership encourages other businesses to follow suit and consider how they can take a more proactive approach to minimising waste and supporting local communities. Just imagine what we could achieve if every business followed their lead.”