Customers will be urged to include priority and long expiry date items in their shop for donation after checkout

Dedicated shelf-edge labels alerting shoppers to food and drink items that are most useful to food banks are to be introduced by a major supermarket for the first time after a trial led to a three-fold rise in donations.

From Friday, customers visiting more than 1,400 branches of Sainsbury’s will be urged to include priority items such as tinned fish, meat and vegetables, longlife fruit juice and dried or UHT milk in their shop, for donation after checkout.

The supermarket is expanding its year-round food collection scheme to encourage more suitable – and long-lasting – donations to help feed those dealing with hunger or in need. It has teamed up with hundreds of charity partners across the UK which will distribute the essential foodstuffs to local communities in time for Christmas.

As part of the same initiative involving Sainsbury’s sister company and retailer Argos, shoppers will also be able to donate new toys in store until 16 December.

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The Help Brighten a Million Christmases campaign is being launched during the festive season when it aims to attract at least 1m donations of foods and toys. But as demand for donated or surplus food in the UK continues to soar against a background of growing dependence on food banks and rising homelessness, the permanent scheme will be the largest of its kind in the country.

The eye-catching labels were the brainchild of a group of teenagers working on a summer social project in Exeter who noticed that customers only spotted food bank donation baskets after finishing their shop.

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As part of a National Citizen Service (NCS) initiative, which aims to encourage community and social cohesion, the teenagers created the shelf-edge label to remind customers during their shop and signpost appropriate items. After successfully pitching the idea to the manager of Sainsbury’s Exeter branch, the labels were implemented in store and donations tripled as a result.

“We’re excited to be working together to expand Sainsbury’s food donation programme and to launch Argos’s toy donation programme” said Claudine Blamey, Sainsbury’s head of corporate responsibility and sustainability.

“It’s been brilliant to work with NCS graduates to permanently roll out their label initiative to all our stores and help reach our target of 1m donations.”

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Mark Richardson, the manager of Exeter food bank, added: “The result of this initiative just goes to show that sometimes you just need a new mind on an old problem. Sometimes the most simple ideas have the greatest impact. This campaign has already had fantastic results locally, and I’m excited to see how it can benefit food banks and their clients across the UK.”

Among the hundreds of Sainsbury’s charity partners are the UK’s biggest food bank network the Trussell Trust – which operates 428 food banks – the Salvation Army, the Felix Project and City Harvest.

Supermarkets have faced criticism for not doing more to redistribute edible food from their own supply chains to the needy – although Sainsbury’s co-founded the food redistribution charity FareShare in 1994 with the homelessness charity Crisis and supported its launch as an independent charity in 2004.

Food banks in some of the poorest areas, meanwhile, are preparing for a big rise in demand when universal credit is rolled out by calling for more donations and volunteers, and stockpiling essential supplies.