Clarity Insights - The Felix Project

Last Wednesday, the Clarity team made its way to The Felix Project in East London for a day of giving back to the community. The Felix Project is a London-based food redistribution project which aims to tackle both food poverty and food waste. Our day started with a talk which outlined the sad facts that 400,000 children in the UK are at risk of missing their next meal, whilst at the same time, our food industry generates more than 3 million tonnes of good, edible food which goes to waste. A particularly stunning example of this is that, every day in the UK, 1.4 million perfect bananas are thrown away. The Felix Project work to solve food poverty by harnessing the power of waste food.

Our mission for the day was to assist the full time chefs in turning excess food from supermarkets into delicious and nutritious meals. The Clarity staff donned aprons, hairnets and crocs, and got to work. Jobs ranged from chopping potatoes to boxing up meals ready to be distributed across London. We were all struck by the sheer volume of food that would have been simply thrown away without the valuable work of the Felix Project. During our time in the kitchen, we were able to create over 2000 meals, including delicious beef chilli and roast chicken dishes.

Whilst we had fun and performed some valuable work, the seriousness of the problems addressed by the Felix Project were not lost on the team. Talking to the staff, we learnt that limitations on the scope of its work are purely caused by under-funding. The Felix Project has no problem sourcing waste food and there is no shortage of organisations desperate for the meals produced (in fact, there are over 150 charities and schools currently on the waiting list). The limiting factor for this wonderful project is purely donations. With every extra piece of funding, the Felix Project will be able to source more food and produce more meals. Therefore, we at Clarity encourage any readers to donate to the project, so that the wonderful staff can continue and expand their vitally important work.

We would like to once again thank the Felix Project for having us, the day proved an invaluable insight into waste and the food poverty that affects far too many in this country.