Tesco food waste rose to equivalent of 119m meals last year

Supermarket promises to redistribute unsold edible food to charities from 2017 as it urges rivals to join fight against waste

Tesco has revealed that the amount of food waste generated by the supermarket giant increased to 59,400 tonnes last year - the equivalent of nearly 119 million meals.

Tesco is the only major supermarket to publish its food waste data, and the increase came despite numerous initiatives designed to tackle the problem. The figure represents a 4% increase on 2015 with its beers, wines and spirits aisles and bakeries blamed for the rise. The amount wasted was the equivalent of one in every 100 food products sold by Tesco during the last financial year.