The offers on our supermarket shelves are designed to entice. Buy one, get one free, they murmur. Buy three for the price of two. For just a little extra money, you can have one extra portion of that, two more of this.

But does our desire for a bargain actually blind us to the fact that we don’t actually need this extra food? Tesco thinks it does, and for the first time has revealed the waste figures for its massive operation.

The retailer says that more than two-thirds of the bagged salad it sells is thrown out – and 35 per cent of that waste is thrown out by the people who buy it.

That has prompted Tesco to end its multi-buy promotions on large bags of salad in a bid to control both its own waste and that of its customers. And it’s not just bagged salad – four out of ten apples end up in the bin, a fifth of all bananas, and half of all bakery items.

Bradford Council offers some stark facts about food waste on the recycling section of its website. For instance, across the UK, a massive 8.3 million tonnes of food is thrown away by households every year.

And that hits families in their pockets: the average household containing children is costing itself £680 a year in chucked-away food.

Then there is the environmental impact – according to Bradford Council, “If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the CO2 impact would be the equivalent of taking one in four cars off the road.”

Tesco commercial director of group food Matt Simister said: “We’ve all got a responsibility to tackle food waste and there is no quick-fix single solution. Little changes can make a big difference, like storing fruit and vegetables in the right way.

“Families are wasting an estimated £700 a year and we want to help them keep that money in their pockets, rather than throwing it in the bin.

“We’re playing our part too and making changes to our processes and in store.

“Ending multi-buy promotions on large packs of bagged salads is one way we can help, but this is just the start and we’ll be reviewing what else we can do. We’re working with our suppliers to try to cut waste at all stages of the journey from farm to fork.”

The Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) publishes figures annually to track food waste – the latest figures published by Wrap in 2011 estimate that 15 million tonnes of food waste is generated each year in the UK.

Wrap director Richard Swannell said: “We welcome Tesco’s approach to tackling food waste across their whole supply chain, and by identifying the hot spots they can tackle these areas effectively.

“Food waste is a global issue and collaborative action is essential if we are to successfully reduce food waste and reap the financial and environmental benefits of doing so.”

While efforts are now being made to tackle the problem at ground-level, there is also work being done in Bradford to deal with the growing mountain of wasted food and turn it to some use.

The University of Bradford, recognising that it generates a lot of food waste, thought about how this could be tackled. The result is the Rocket Composter.

The university operates the Rocket through its Ecoversity scheme, and says: “The majority of this waste, up until now, has been collected and sent to landfill as residual waste. Not only is this waste unnecessarily filling up landfill sites, it is costing the university through transport and disposal costs.

“During 2008, Ecoversity looked into ways in which we could treat our food waste on site. The solution has been the purchasing of a Rocket! This is not a way to send our waste to the moon but an ‘in-vessel composter’ which is located in the loading bay behind the JB Priestley Library.

“Having a Rocket composter means that the university is able to turn food and garden waste from the grounds into compost within 14 days. The Rocket’s careful design means that it is possible to compost a relatively large amount of waste despite its compact size.

“The aim is to compost up to 1,400 litres of organic waste per week. Using the Rocket it is also possible to compost meat and fish alongside other food waste.”

So while the big organisations such as the university and the Council – last year, out of 17 Yorkshire and Humberside local authorities, Bradford was placed third for recycling and composting – are doing their bit to reduce the mountain, it looks like the supermarkets are now leading the charge to get us to take more responsibility for food waste in the home.