Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Our Full Round-Up Of The Charities Fighting to Feed Britain
Reading Time: 5 minutesTHE FELIX PROJECT & OTEHR UK-WIDE FOOD REDISTRIBUTION SERVICES
“4.7 million adults in London struggle to afford to eat every day.
2 million children are at risk of missing the next meal.
Meanwhile, our food industry generates 3 million tonnes of good, edible surplus food each year.”
The Felix Project
The Felix Project, a London-based food redistribution charity set up in 2016 to tackle the above issues, rescue good, surplus food from the food industry that cannot be sold and would otherwise go to waste.
The food is of a high, nutritious quality, including fresh fruit and vegetables, baked goods, salads, meat and fish. The charity collects or receives food from over 539 suppliers, including supermarkets, wholesalers, farms, restaurants and delis, which they then sort and deliver to almost 1000 front-line charities, primary schools and holiday programmes in London.
This way, food that would have gone to waste is reaching vulnerable people, the homeless, people with mental health or those who aren’t able to provide themselves with regular, healthy food.
The Felix Project believes they can win the fight against food waste and hunger in London, and they’re not the only ones.
REGIONS AROUND THE UK
London is not the only place such projects are being run. In the wake of the Cost of Living Crisis and families going hungry across the nation, other companies are working to redistribute essential food to those in need.
NORTHEAST & NORTHWEST
The Bread and Butter Thing is a community-led charity helping families afford to get by, providing parcels of food for a nominal fee to families looking for support to get by on a day-to-day basis.
NORTH WEST
Eggcup is a food redistribution charity that takes a community-led approach to supporting families facing financial challenges. They have a commercial food processing facility and provide businesses a professional solution to surplus food.
Open Kitchens is a national food solution that brings together restaurants & their communities to fund, produce & deliver free meals to those in need.
YORKSHIRE & THE HUMBER
FoodAWARECIC is a central location for all projects and organisations across South Yorkshire to access large amounts of produce for the benefit of the communities in which they work. They happily accept all surplus, even items past their best before date – something unique to the region – and are happy to accept large or small quantities, working hard to ensure that any surplus goods are made to benefit local communities and the people in them.
Food Works upcycle quality surplus and locally grown ingredients into delicious food and drink. They also collect and share surplus food and develop hyperlocal food production through community growing, empowering people with skills, knowledge and support.
SOUTH WEST
Devon and Cornwall Food Action receive edible surplus produce from food suppliers, supermarkets and manufacturers that would otherwise go for waste disposal. They then redistribute this food to the community by delivering direct to those most in need. The food hub in Plymouth can handle chilled, frozen, ambient and palletised packaged goods for redistribution into Devon and Cornwall.
Food for Nought is a Peterborough-based charity that delivers surplus food from local farmers and supermarkets to food banks and community fridges. Their activities not only help tackle food poverty but also have a positive environmental impact by redirecting food from landfill.
SOUTH EAST, SOUTH WEST, LONDON
UKHarvest is a not-for-profit perishable food rescue operation that collects quality excess food from commercial outlets and delivers it, direct and free of charge, to charities. They provide much needed assistance to vulnerable people, collecting surplus food from all types of food providers, including fruit and vegetable markets, supermarkets, hotels, wholesalers, farmers, events and restaurants.
UK-WIDE
City Harvest puts surplus food to good use in a sustainable way, by redistributing to organisations serving people unable to afford or with no access to nourishing food. With a fleet of refrigerated vehicles we collect food from all types of businesses and deliver to more than 300 organisations. City Harvest work with farmers to collect harvested product that is now surplus, helping to tackle the +3million tonnes of food surplus and waste on farm each year.
Fareshare is the UK’s largest food redistribution charity, taking edible surplus food from more than 500 businesses, including major retailers, manufacturers, farmers and growers and redistributing it to vulnerable people through a UK-wide network of almost 11,000 frontline charities. Their dedicated food team will work to redistribute your food surplus in a way that’s easy, cost effective and makes sense for your business.
Foodcloud connects businesses that have surplus food with Charities and Community Groups that need it. From extreme peaks and troughs in the supply of food, limited volunteers and restrictive Covid-19 work practices, FoodCloud saw some of their highest and lowest volumes of food in 2020 amid panic buying and the closure of the hospitality sector. As a result, during the peak of the pandemic in April and May, FoodCloud more than doubled the amount of food redistributed from an average of 25 tonnes per week in February to over 60 tonnes per week.
Food Drop’s tech platform makes it incredibly easy for charities to collect unsold food from their favourite nearby food retailers. You can also join as a retail partner to take advantage of the social, environmental and financial benefits.
Olio is an app that redistributes surplus food to the immediate local community. Olio connects neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. This could be food nearing its sell-by date in local stores, spare home-grown vegetables, bread from your baker, or the groceries in your fridge when you go away. Olio can also be used for non-food household items.
The Real Junk Food Project is a social enterprise governed by a Charitable Foundation, intercepting surplus goods and diverting them through a circular economy model via social supermarkets, schools and third sector organisations.
Too Good To Go are a social impact organisation that is fighting food waste by creating a global food waste movement. This is done through work with schools, businesses, households, public affairs and our market place. Their market place is an app that connects consumers with businesses who have surplus food, so no food goes to waste.
The Trussell Trust runs a network of over 420 food banks, which work out of more than 1,200 centres across the UK and provide emergency food to people referred for support. In the last year their network gave almost 1.5m three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis.
Further Reading
We wrote about Fareshare here.
Free Food Wherever you Live here.
Where Kid’s Eat for £1 or less here.
Also don’t forget that MoneyMagpie are waging war on the laws against Freeganism – sign our campaign to legalise it here.
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