Aldi donates surplus food to local charities
CHARITIES in Greystones and Blessington are now receiving free food donations from their local Aldi stores as part of Aldi Ireland’s expanded partnership with FoodCloud.
Surplus food from Aldi’s Greystones and Blessington stores is being redistributed to charities and community groups including Lakers Social and Recreation Club daily through FoodCloud, the not-for-profit social enterprise founded by Iseult Ward and Aoibheann O’Brien,
Aldi’s Greystones and Blessington stores are the latest Aldi stores to participate in the FoodCloud programme. Aldi has significantly scaled up its operations with FoodCloud, with 128 Aldi stores now donating surplus food, increasing Aldi’s overall donations to Foodcloud by 60 per cent.
This week Aldi reached the significant milestone of donating 1,000,000 meals to charities through FoodCloud since the partnership began in 2014. This equates to a saving of almost €1.5 million for the charity partners involved.
‘We are delighted to announce that we are now working with FoodCloud to support local charities in Greystones and Blessington. Groups such as Lakers Social and Recreation Club play such an important role in their community and we are very proud to be able to support them and the vital work they do,’ said Finbar McCarthy, Aldi’s group buying director
‘Our research tells us that 87 per cent of people prefer to shop with a retailer that redistributes its unsold food to those in need. We also know that many of our customers want options to help reduce their own household waste, and we’re responding to meet those needs. We have already introduced smaller pack sizes and made perishables, like bananas, apples, oranges and avocados available for individual sale.’
FoodCloud co-founder and CEO Iseult Ward said, ‘Our partnership with Aldi has already enabled us to redistribute 510 tonnes of consumable food to hundreds of charities nationwide. We are excited that more Aldi stores are now part of the FoodCloud mission to help tackle food waste and food poverty. While consumer awareness of the issue is growing, consumer behaviour still needs to change. In Ireland alone we generate over one million tonnes of food waste annually while one in eight people are experiencing food poverty.’
Charity groups and community groups can register for the service at http://food.cloud/