Buy-One-Get-One-Free Offers ‘Should Be Scrapped To Cut Food Waste’

House of Lords committee has asked the supermarkets to stop offers like “buy one get one free” to help end the “morally repugnant” waste of millions of tons of food.

The Lords European Union committee said big retailers should stop cancelling orders of food from farmers after the produce had been grown, a practice that leads to edible food being ploughed back into the fields. It also said that the unused food should be donated to food banks rather than sent for composting or landfill.

Lady Scott of Needham Market, the committee chairwoman, said that the peers were shocked at the scale of food waste in the EU. Around 15 million tons of foods are dumped each year in the UK and at least 90 million tons across the EU.

In a report, the committee said the EU’s efforts to reduce food waste were “fragmented and untargeted” and called for the new European commission to publish a five-year strategy within six months of taking office later this year. According to the report, the carbon footprint of worldwide food waste was equivalent to twice the greenhouse gas emissions of all road transportation in the US.

Infoeditor