Shops should axe “buy one get one free” offers to cut the 15 million tonnes of food wasted in the UK each year.

The call comes from an influential House of Lords Committee which demands action to tackle the £5bn a year lost in wasted food.

Its hard-hitting report says retail giants must do more to cut the 90 million tonnes of food thrown away annually across the European Union.

90m tonnes of food wasted across EU annually (pic: Nick Saltmarsh)

Supermarkets should send more unsold items to food banks instead of to recycling sites, says the Lord’s EU Committee.

The committee calls on Chancellor George Osborne to offer tax breaks or a VAT cut to persuade supermarkets to donate “edible, unsold food to food to food banks rather than sending it to be composted”.

Stores must also do more to avoid cancelling orders of food that has already been grown – a problem which leads to mountains of food being ploughed back into fields or left unharvested.

The committee said new “smart packaging” should be used to reflect how long food remains edible rather than “arbitrary use-by dates which have to err on the side of caution”.

It criticises efforts across Europe to reduce food waste as “fragmented and untargeted”.

Committee chairman Baroness Scott of Needham Market condemned the huge amount of food wasted as “morally repugnant”.

She said the amount of food that industrialised nations across the globe throw away 222 million tonnes of food a year – almost the same amount of food grown in sub-Sarahan Africa.

Baroness Scott added: “We are urging the supermarkets to look again at offers such as ‘buy one get one free’, which can encourage excess consumption which leads to food waste.

“Supermarkets must also work much more closely with their suppliers so as not to cancel pre-ordered food which has been grown, is perfectly edible and is then ploughed straight back into the field.”

The committee said the carbon footprint of worldwide food waste was equivalent to the global greenhouse gas emission of all road transport in the USA.

The peers called on European Commission bosses to publish a new five-year strategy for tackling food waste.