M&S blasted for binning £10,000 of food it had pledged to give to charity – days before its use-by date
The posh supermarket cleared the shelves of the food on Christmas Eve - with many binned items having days until their use-by dates
MARKS & Spencer was blasted yesterday for binning £10,000 of food on Christmas Eve after pledging it to charity.
The 3,000 items of food were thrown out despite some being two days from use-by dates.
Seven wheelie bins were filled at a store before closing for Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
The items, including chicken fillets, whole birds, burgers, fruit and veg, were seen being tipped into bin lorries.
Other produce chucked out by the M&S Simply Food store in Swiss Cottage, North London, included 100 bags of carrots.
The store reopened on Wednesday. Last night Lib Dem MP Ed Davey said: “Marks & Spencer should surely require stores to follow their normal national policy.
“Wasting food is bad at any time. But throwing away good food at Christmas when there are homeless people on the streets outside your shop is unacceptable.”
A source said: “It’s a disgrace so much was thrown out. It could still have been given to someone who needed it as some had two days left.
“It could have gone to feed some homeless people. There is a Salvatian Army centre just down the road.”
M&S operates what it likes to call a Plan A eco agenda, which includes a nationwide food distribution scheme linking its stores to local charities.
What most customers do not realise is that many of its 383 Simply Food outlets are franchises and not part of the crusade.
But the Swiss Cottage one is not a franchise. M&S owns it, so there was no reason for the grub to not go to charity.
Much of the food was donated by local firms. Yesterday M&S launched an investigation into what went wrong at the Swiss Cottage store.
A spokesman insisted: “We have robust processes in place to minimise food waste.
“We are working hard to ensure that every piece of unsold food in our stores goes to those in need.
“Our stores work regularly with over 700 local food charities.
“We’re looking into why this didn’t happen at our Swiss Cottage store on this occasion.”
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It is the second such probe in barely a month after food was photographed going to waste at the M&S store in London’s High Street Kensington.
Shocked finance expert Jasmine Birtles posted a Twitter snap of packaged sandwiches, sushi and boiled eggs destined for the bin.
She tweeted: “This is appalling. All this food — and more — is being thrown away.”
