Give & Take: Sorting, Saving, Supporting: Prosek London’s City Harvest Volunteering Days

This December, two groups from Prosek’s London office had the pleasure of taking part in a Give Back initiative with City Harvest, the UK’s first food-redistribution charity and a driving force in the fight against both food poverty and food waste.

City Harvest compiles surplus, nutritious food from businesses and redistributes it directly to charities, schools and community programmes supporting vulnerable Londoners, including children, the elderly and people experiencing homelessness. Its model not only tackles hunger, but also prevents quality produce from going to landfills, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Both mornings began early at New Covent Garden Market, where the teams rolled up their sleeves to sort through crates of donated produce. From tomatoes and cabbages to aubergines, lettuces, carrots and more, we efficiently sorted and packed everything to be distributed to City Harvest’s charity partners. The experience brought into sharp focus how quickly perfectly edible food can be discarded, and how transformative it is when that food is recovered and redirected to people who need it.

Once the produce was sorted, we built pallets ready for delivery to City Harvest’s community partners across the capital. A healthy dose of friendly competition kicked in between the two groups, adding some light-hearted energy to work with a very serious purpose. The physical nature of the task (felt in more than a few backs the next morning) gave us an even deeper appreciation for the City Harvest team, who work at this pace every day to keep food moving. Across the two mornings, Prosek helped sort more than four tonnes of food, an impressive feat thanks to the efforts of volunteers.

Alongside our hands on support, Prosek’s donation enabled an additional 2.5 tonnes of food to be redistributed – the equivalent of 6,000 meals delivered, and 6.25 tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions prevented. Seeing the scale of City Harvest’s operation was eye-opening for many of us. Days like this are an important reminder of the value of stepping outside our day-to-day roles and contributing to the communities where we live and work to create meaningful impact.