Tesco will roll out its free food initiative in days, with shoppers seeing an amendment to the current yellow sticker scheme for reduced items
A major supermarket giant has started giving away free food in a radical bid to cut waste.
Tesco has confirmed it has been rolling out a new yellow sticker scheme which will indicate which items will not need paying for. Shoppers will be used to seeing yellow stickers with barcodes applied to reduced items with such discounts currently capped at up to 90 percent. But customers can now look out for special ‘free’ stickers. Alongside reducing waste, the move will play into helping customers who are facing financial hardship amid the cost of living crisis.
However, despite the trial being a huge step towards the company’s Net Zero target, shoppers will not be able to tap up the new scheme at every store. The trial will go ahead at a “small number of Tesco Express stores” and the stickers will be applied from 9.30pm onwards. The exact stores and where they are based have not been revealed. It is also not yet known if this scheme will be extended nationwide after a specific time-frame.
While there has been no official confirmation over what products are likely to make the cut, some eagle-eyed customers have already spotted the sorts of items being given away. According to the Daily Mail, one Tesco Express store made a specific pile of yellow-stickered items which were labelled as free.
The pile contained meal deal items such as sandwiches, fruit and sushi which was all about to expire. Underneath, a sign attached to the shelf explained the concept. Anyone coming across a free item can pick it up along with their shopping, but it still must be scanned at the till like every other paid-for item. The produce will only be offered to shoppers if it’s not already taken by charities, local groups or specific store staff, it has been reported.
The reality behind a cost-of-living crisis
The most recent government data from 2022 to 2023 makes for stark reading as it reveals 2.3million people, equating to 3 percent of the population, live in homes that require the use of a foodbank. These services are set up within communities where individuals can pick up free, donated food items to get by when money is increasingly tight.
The Trussell Trust, which delivers important food parcels to those who have fallen on hard times also put a figure on exactly how busy its volunteers had been. It said: “More than 3.1 million emergency food parcels were distributed by Trussell’s community of food banks in the past 12 months – the most parcels ever distributed in a year and nearly double the number compared to five years ago.”
