PETALING JAYA, March 21 — A food surplus programme by Tesco is expected to be launched by the third quarter of the year, says Tesco Malaysia.

Its corporate affairs and government relations director, Datuk Azlam Shah Alias, said the programme was in its trial stage. 

“The trial began last month and more information will be available once we launch,” he said.

The move was to emulate Tesco United Kingdom's commitment to donate all the unsold food from its stores to 5,000 local charities across the UK in an initiative which aims to eradicate all its food waste by the end of next year.

Tesco UK, which is the largest Tesco chain, announced the move on March 11, also partnering with FareShare to launch a digital open platform called FareShare FoodCloud which will enable its staff and charities to distribute surplus food.

The plan is part of UK’s nationwide programme Community Food Connection, which is being piloted in 14 stores and had provided more than 22 tonnes of food or 50,000 meals to the needy.

Jaron Keng, manager of Zero Waste Campaign, a project under Universiti Malaya (UM), lauded Tesco Malaysia’s effort.

“Other supermarkets should also follow suit. Some food chains have carried out such move although not all items can be given, especially the perishables,” he     said.

Keng said food waste recycling in the country was not as popular as some of the other recyclables due to an economic factor.

“Recyclables such as paper and bottles have monetary values. However, there is not much value for food waste especially through decomposting, its most popular recycling method,” he said.

“For example, in UM, the 5,000kg per month that we decompost only yields 800kg of fertiliser due to high mass reduction.” 

In order to promote food waste recycling, Keng said the government needed to have more political will to deal with the issue.

“Most commercial and household waste, including food waste, accounts for more than 80 per cent of total waste at landfills,” he said.

“The government should focus their attention on the issue, especially through policies. There is more that could be done aside from waste separation policy.

“We need to make it more expensive for businesses and households to get rid of waste by increasing the tipping fee (charge levied on quantity of waste received at a processing facility).”

Some sanitary landfills in the country have a tipping fee of between RM28.80 and RM36 per tonne, one of the cheapest in the world compared to Germany, which charges between RM1,000 and RM1,400; Australia (RM215); and China (RM60 to RM75).