In Scotland 541,000 donations were made at 53 stores

A three-day foodbank collection drive by supermarket chain Tesco saw enough food donated to make up 3.6 million meals to help feed some of the UK’s poorest people.

From 2-4 July all UK Tesco stores hosted a Neighbourhood Food Collection drive for either a Trussell Trust foodbank or FareShare.

In Scotland 541,000 donations were made at 53 stores.

Shoppers were asked to buy from a shopping list which included pasta sauces, UHT milk, tinned vegetables and cereal.

Tesco has said it will add an extra 30% of food to all that was donated.

David McAuley, Trussell Trust chief executive, said: “We are truly grateful for the amazing effort by Tesco store staff, customers, volunteers and foodbanks in this year’s summer Neighbourhood Food Collection.

“The donations will make a huge difference to foodbanks’ ability to not only provide a minimum of three days’ emergency food to people in need but also additional support to tackle the root causes of poverty.

“It is timely given the additional pressure on families of providing lunch time meals and child care during the summer school holiday months. I would like to say a special thank you to everyone at Tesco who helped make this event such a success.”

This year’s collection which also encouraged people to spread awareness of the drive on social media using #everycanhelps was the sixth collection the supermarket has held.

Since the first collection in the summer of 2012 over 27 million meals have been donated to help feed people in crisis.