Eight local charities have been served up 335,000 free meals
EIGHT charity organisations in Co Wexford have received almost 335,000 donated meals as a result of an initiative between Tesco Ireland and FoodCloud.
Tesco says it’s trying to ensure that by 2020 no good food goes to waste in its stores as part of a No Time For Waste campaign and according to FoodCloud throughout the entire country six millions meals have been donated to schools and charitable causes since 2014 - resulting in savings of around €8m.
In conjunction with the food project Tesco also launched the Community Chill Campaign which provides food-related good causes with free fridges and freezers so they can receive more surplus food donations to help people in need.
To-date Tesco has donated 150 fridges and freezers to local causes across Ireland.
The company is encouraging more Wexford based charities to sign up to receive its surplus food donations.
Ozanam House in Wexford town is among the centres that benefit from participating in the scheme and its Regional Manager, Gordon Power,described the initiative as ‘wonderful’.
‘I love the whole concept of it and it’s extremely helpful to us as we can make significant cost savings,’ he said.
‘We provide three main meals per day plus snacks in the evenings,’ he added.
‘Whatever vegetables we get from Tesco will be used at dinner and salads are served in the evening with something like pizza.’
He also said the centre gets ‘good fruit’ from Tesco and that any donations that aren’t used in the centre itself it put to ‘alternative good use’.