On the 5th of August 2026 liverymen Sarah Jopling and Jonathan Hook visited City Harvest's New Covent Garden site to spend the morning volunteering. The Worshipful Company of Glovers, along with several other Livery Companies supports this initiative.
Sarah and Jonathan
Sarah sent this report:
Across the UK, the cost-of-living crisis has created a food emergency. Currently, 1 in 5 people in London are struggling to afford to eat, yet 1/3 of all food goes to waste. City Harvest rescues nutritious food from going to waste and distributes it to those communities who rely on its support.
Every day, City Harvest delivers to a variety of community projects, giving approximately 130,000 people access to food a week. These projects include food banks, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, schools and nurseries, social supermarkets, supported accommodation including domestic violence refuges, refugee/asylum centres, and many more.
Volunteers are very important to the functioning of the service and for every hour volunteered City Harvest can deliver enough food for 530 meals. Whereas the Acton site (which I visited last year) takes surplus fresh and prepared food from farms, supermarkets and other suppliers the New Covent Garden site takes almost exclusively from the traders at this site. Therefore, they handle mainly fruit and vegetables. Once business finishes at 6am the traders release any unwanted produce to City Harvest. This is then checked to remove any spoiled items which was the role Jonathan and I assisted with. The food is then put onto pallets according to the needs of the organisations being delivered to on that day. The regular staff know what each organisation needs and can cope with thus avoiding inappropriate food being sent and then wasted.
The staff were very friendly, and we both very much enjoyed our visit. The fact that places like this exists is a testament to the hard work of the staff and the volunteers who give freely of their time. The sad fact is that they need to exist in the first place.
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