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The Grocer
The Felix Project
In the UK, 6.4 million tonnes of perfectly good, edible food worth over £21 billion goes to waste annually, according to circularity NGO WRAP. That’s enough to feed the entire UK population 3 meals a day for nearly 3 months. Currently, less than 1% of this waste is redistribute for human consumption, and a smaller fraction again (<0.05%) is redistributed from farms.
Our UK office has been collaborating with The Felix Project, London’s largest food redistribution charity, since 2023. What started with a day of corporate volunteering in their Poplar depot evolved into supporting them to understand their own environmental footprint and the environmental impact of the work they do rescuing food from waste.
We’re proud to share our latest collaborative piece of work, which looks beyond The Felix Project’s direct impacts and explores how they can influence the wider system to reduce food waste and increase access to healthy, home-grown food.
In May, we conducted a short research study into the quantity of surplus food that could be feasibly redistributed by charities from British farms, and the economic and environmental impact of redistributing that food. We identified that, annually, a staggering 120-180kt of surplus farm produce (~350M meals) could be redirected to people, for a modest investment of £10-23M, generating £73-110M of value in food.
After refining the work based on some feedback from key industry stakeholders from organisations, The Felix Project launched their policy paper, calling for a financial incentive for farmers to redistribute surplus food, at Groundswell this week. We were very proud to see our work form the basis of a movement for change in the food industry and are excited to see the momentum grow.
Click below to read our research study.
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