A woman who until recently worked at a BP garage claims taking any leftover food meant for the bin was strictly prohibited and regarded as a "sackable offense". Maggie* says she and her colleagues were forced to throw out bin bags filled with food every single day, with many waste items still perfectly edible.
Amid the ongoing cost of living crisis, Maggie is now campaigning to get all supermarkets to follow Tesco's lead and offer food waste to staff members at the end of the day. Speaking with the Mirror anonymously, she has shared a photograph of a poster she claims had been displayed in the staff room, warning that eating any waste food would be considered a "gross misconduct."
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The poster urges staff members to "follow company procedure" whereby any food waste should be "thrown straight into the food waste bin." Those who have bought food from the store in the chiller are asked to "please attach the receipt to it with your name."
Speaking with the Mirror, Maggie says she always had a keen interest in food waste and has previously collected items from 'food waste heroes' such as Tesco and Pret a manger. The juxtaposition between eating free food from these stores, while throwing bags away at work, prompted her to start the petition.
Maggie said: "The cost of living has gone up. Supermarket workers aren't going to get further pay rises anytime soon, so supermarkets need to look at other ways to help their staff.
"At the end of the day, as long as it's done safely, you're killing two birds with one stone. It's a no-brainer for me. I can't get my head around why this is still going on."
According to Maggie, the worst waste comes from the Wild Bean Cafe, and she recalls one evening shortly before she left when she threw away five bin bags full of food, including sandwiches that could have been given away.
She continued: "It's really disturbing, and I know I'll have colleagues, whether it be in the store I was just working in, or other BPs, Morrison's, etc, that will one day be going to a food bank and the next day they'll be going into a store having to throw all these bags of food waste into the bin."
The ex-employee finds the situation very "frustrating" and "totally offensive", and says she knows of many former colleagues working at the same level and wage who feel the same way. She says this was "not so much" the case with the managers.
Maggie's store was signed up to Too Good To Go, a popular app where customers collect a "magic bag" of food waste items for a small fee. However, she says managers only allowed for a couple of bags a day, with the vast majority of food going to waste.
Although Maggie, who worked at the store for about one year, says she tried to raise this with them, she claims they just didn't listen. She also tried to speak with managers about getting a charity collective going, but found there was "so much red tape involved."
According to Maggie: "I actually used to pile a lot more than I was supposed to into those magic bags. We were told we were only allowed to put up to £14 worth in, but often I'd put in up to £30 worth, as much as I could fit in."
She claims staff members were never actually given a proper reason for the £14 rule, which she puts down to "silly politics" and a lack of "common sense."
Commenting on the poster which was put up in the staff area shortly before she left, Maggie continued: "I just think it's hilarious. They put this up at the worst time possible when people are struggling and getting frustrated because they're choosing between feeding themselves and their kids and putting electricity on their meter."
After her petition began to gain traction, Maggie received comments from workers at other BP stores, recounting similar instances, with one person claiming their area manager told them they "weren't wasting enough food."
However, she's keen to stress that, although she's drawn from her own experiences, this isn't just BP's issue. Going forward, Maggie now wants all supermarkets to give food to members of staff at the end of the day, rather than simply chucking it away.
She added: "I have enjoyed working at BP. It was a really nice store and everybody was really nice to work with. It was just the food waste problem that I had I had trouble with."
Maggie's petition has gained more than 44,000 signatures and counting at the time of writing, with many of those commenting sharing similar stories
A BP spokesperson told the Mirror: "We’re always working to minimise food waste at the 300 sites we operate across the UK. We are currently trialling a new programme in which colleagues working at our sites can benefit from surplus food from their stores. If this proves successful, we intend to roll this out at scale across all sites in due course."
You can sign Maggie's petition for yourself here
Do you have a campaign you'd like to raise awareness of? Email us at julia.banim@reachplc.com
