Sainsbury’s customers have joined millions of shoppers across the UK to help raise more than £500,000 through the industry wide Let’s Make a Meal of It campaign. Across April and early May, five major supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, M&S, Morrisons, Tesco and Waitrose, came together to run the initiative in stores and online, helping to unlock new sources of food for people facing hunger.
Latest Food Foundation figures show 8 million people go hungry in the UK, including 2.2 million children, while frontline charities say they can’t meet high levels of demand for food support. The funding raised through Let’s Make a Meal of it will help provide fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, fish and cupboard staples by rescuing edible, surplus food from the UK food supply chain.
Customers showed that UK hunger remains a cause close to their hearts, donating 45% more than last year’s campaign.
Let’s Make a Meal of It was spearheaded by food industry convener, Alliance Food Sourcing (AFS) and Britain’s leading food redistribution charity, Felix. Bringing together 50 leading food businesses, AFS works to unlock surplus food and factory capacity in the food supply chain and turn food that otherwise might go to waste into meals for charities. This includes recusing edible surplus that goes to waste across the food supply chain, before it even reaches people’s plates, for example, when packaging is defective or when production lines switch between products.
Every £1 donated during the campaign will provide five meals. Funding will target high demand products, such as fresh produce, protein and staples. This includes:
- Rescuing 500 tonnes of surplus fresh fruit and veg that would otherwise be wasted
- New processes to create vitamin-rich juice and smoothies from surplus fruit
- 250 tonnes of rice and noodles
- 80 tonnes of porridge
- A million cans of Branston baked beans, produced in spare factory time, will reach charities from the end of July
- Minced meat supplied using spare factory capacity from August
- Surplus ingredients repurposed to make nutritious fishcakes
The focus on cupboard staples is important, as it makes up just 4% of donated food. But through AFS partnerships and the money raised through Let’s Make A Meal of It, new sources have been identified and implemented.
Businesses investing to support these initiatives include Asda, Tesco, Waitrose, and suppliers, Albert Bartletts, Allied British Foods, Dovecote Park, Hilton Seafood and Princes.
As food is rescued from the supply chain, before packaging and transportation, it can be provided to the charities much more cost-efficiently, meaning the £0.5m donated will provide food that has a retail cost of around £5.5m, if were to be bought.