Hundreds of thousands of kilograms of fresh fruit and vegetables are being saved thanks to a brand-new initiative from The Felix Project.
Felix Fresh is a pop-up market where tonnes of surplus produce is given out for free to local communities. So far 18 events have taken place across London at a mixture of existing Felix community organisations and sites that don’t usually receive food, including the first event, which took place at the London Metropolitan University.
To date over 90,000KG of produce has been given away to people across London, including potatoes, courgettes, carrots, spring onions and bananas.
The charity introduced Felix Fresh as a way to accept more seasonal gluts of food over the summer. During the UK harvest season more food is available, but in previous years Felix has had to turn down offers of fresh fruit and vegetables because of the capacity of our existing network. Often the food banks, community centres and schools that are regularly supplied aren’t able to accept these surges in UK grown food, this can lead to boxes and boxes of extra food going to waste. However, Felix Fresh is open to everyone in the community meaning anyone can come along, take home a bag of food and help reduce food waste.
Rachel Ledwith, Head of Community at The Felix Project explains more: “Food waste is a huge issue in the UK, every year around 10.2 million tonnes of food is thrown away with about 70% classed as edible. Food waste has a devastating effect on the planet, it is a waste of the resources, such as the water and land required to grow the food, a waste of all the other effort that goes into getting food to our homes, from sowing and picking to packaging and transporting the produce. Add to that the greenhouse gases that come about if the food ends up rotting in landfill all makes food waste a big environmental disaster. The Felix Project was set up to try and combat this issue and so initiatives like this, that help us reduce food waste are really important and we are thrilled with how well Felix Fresh events have been going down so far.”
Another 18 Felix Fresh events are planned over the next few months, including several at Cook for Good in Islington. The charity has already received two Felix Fresh deliveries and have two more booked in for August and September.
Cook for Good is a social enterprise which runs a food-based community programme at the Priory Green Estate, largely funded by corporate teambuilding cooking sessions. They provide a weekly surplus food pantry, which includes around 230 KG of food from The Felix Project’s East London depot, and run free cooking courses, training programmes and community meals.
As Karen Mattison, Cook for Good’s co-founder, explains: “The Felix Project are a fantastic partner, providing an amazing range of produce for our Pantry each week, so when they asked if we could host a Felix Fresh event, it was a no-brainer. It was a huge success; our community members were able to choose bags of healthy fresh food to take home and cook and help prevent it from going to waste.”
