Help reduce food waste with The Felix Project

Have you ever thought about volunteering? If you have spare time, or want to meet new people, it’s a great way of getting involved in your local community.

In fact, these are just 2 reasons why people volunteer. 49% of people say they volunteer in order to help people, while other reasons include learning new skills or because the cause was important personally.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of finding the right job. How about getting out and about on your bike, or combining charity work with plenty of walking and exercise?

The Felix Project

The Felix Project is a charity working to address the balance between food waste and food poverty. Launched in 2016, Felix began with just one van and a dozen willing partners, picking up surplus – but still perfectly edible – food from suppliers. Now they have 11 vans and 126 suppliers, and collect about 20 tonnes of food a week.

The food, fresh and in date but unable to be sold by supermarkets, wholesalers and other food suppliers, is then delivered to local charities and schools. The charities – 165 in total – provide meals and food parcels to the local community, helping over 30,000 people each week.

The Felix Project Green Scheme

As the Felix network spreads out across more of London, getting to the suppliers and charities is quite a feat. However, it’s made possible by the amazing support of a cohort of volunteers, and plenty of legwork.

Urban Locker have partnered with Felix to help set up a new ‘Green Scheme’. Volunteers can collect a courier bag from the Felix locker at the Old Street location, and then set off on their assigned route, collecting food from suppliers and delivering to charities along the way.

Use of the lockers provides a secure place to keep the courier bags until needed – and the coded access means that volunteers can collect their bags outside of work hours for their assigned evening shift.

Become a volunteer for The Felix Project

Living and working in Shoreditch, right in the centre of London’s technology hub, we’re surrounded by the hustle and bustle of busy working people. There’s a continuous hum of activity from local pubs, cafes and restaurants as they fill with the commuters, residents and visitors popping in to grab breakfast, settling down for a meeting over coffee, or enjoying a late lunch.

It’s incredible to think that, amidst the abundance of snacking, there are thousands of people in the streets nearby right now without enough food to eat. And yet over 700,000 tonnes of edible food goes to waste in our food industry.

As one of our volunteers said,

“Volunteering on the new Green Scheme Shift […] has made me feel more involved both with the charity and the East London communities through which we walk. There is something about physically transporting the surplus food through the streets of London that makes me feel like I am a part of something great and making a real contribution.”

If you would like to be a part of the “Green Scheme’, sign up on our website – it takes just 1-2 hours of your evening and can have an incredible impact on the lives of hundreds of adults, families and children in need.