Agromenes: The Food Waste Inspector is right to call out M&S, Waitrose and Lidl for throwing away food that is perfectly good to eat

Agromenes has a new hero. He remains anonymous, but he calls himself the Food Waste Inspector. He has been busy outing some big supermarkets — M&S, Waitrose and Lidl — for throwing away food that is perfectly good to eat. His bin pictures show sliced meat, whole chickens, potatoes and wine — all good to sell, but chucked in the refuse bins. After his story hit social media, one store’s response was to lock their bins so our hero could no longer look inside. Now, these major outlets have serious investigations under way and the big names concerned have set about recovering their reputation for fighting food waste and doing what they can to distribute surplus products to the needy. That is a worthy determination.

The UK wastes more food than any other country in Europe, enough to feed 30 million people in a nation where more than eight million go short and in a world where 733 million face hunger. Much of that wastage comes from our own homes where, on average, a family throws away £470 worth of food a year, 70% of which is edible. In addition to what is wasted at home, retail outlets discard 270,000 tons of food annually. This is where the inspector comes in. His revelations highlight the very worst kind of wastage: food that is well before its sell-by date and yet is chucked in the bin. However, this is only the tip of Britain’s enormous pile of waste.

Only 7% of total food surplus from manufacture or retailing is redistributed to the needy; 93% of the surplus food that we grow, pack and distribute is destroyed, and that represents 25 million tons of greenhouse-gas emissions — more than the emissions caused by all the big HGV lorries on the road put together. This can’t go on. It’s not only that it is scandalous to waste so much when there are so many people with so little, it is simply that we are going to be increasingly pressed to grow the food that we need. The loss of agricultural land to building, the continued reduction in the fertility of the soil, the damaging effects of climate change and a growing population — all make it more challenging to meet our domestic targets in a world where the same pressures globally make food imports increasingly difficult and expensive.

Yet the reduction of wastage is simply not central to national policies. The parallel with energy is useful. We are rightly shifting from fossil fuels to renewables, but the best immediate change would be to waste less electricity, gas and oil. Yet energy saving is way down the agenda of all political parties. As a society, we seem inured to waste, which means we don’t take the measures that could make the necessary difference. It’s not only that the supermarkets should make sure that the Food Waste Inspector will never again find good food thrown away in their bins. It is that all of them should take more responsibility for their waste and, indeed, their customers’ waste.

We’ve got rid of BOGOFs — Buy One Get One Free — but we haven’t stopped the deals that make buying three packets so much cheaper than single purchases. They encourage us to buy more than we need and make waste much more likely. It also isn’t made easy enough to buy small quantities of fresh food, such as two carrots or a single little gem lettuce. Selling more by encouraging waste is simply not acceptable. Of course, in the end, it’s about individual choices, but retailers have a responsibility to make it easier and cheaper to do the right thing.

This feature originally appeared in the January 28, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.