King to officially launch food waste project on milestone 75th birthday

Inspired by Charles, the scheme aims to support the nation during the cost-of-living crisis by redistributing food destined for landfills.

The King and Queen will appear publicly on his three-quarter century birthday on Tuesday, visiting a surplus food distribution centre outside London.

Charles and Camilla will meet staff and volunteers and hear about the ways food waste can be used for social good.

The project, which was first announced in July and is being coordinated by the monarch’s charitable organisation, The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund (PWCF), aims to help tackle food poverty by saving surplus food, creating coronation food hubs as a network of major distribution centres and supporting the wider sector with funding.

The PWCF said on its website: “We won’t beat food poverty through waste reduction alone.

“But saving food and circulating it through charities and community groups to people in need is a vital place to start. It also has significant social and environmental benefits.”

Earlier this week, the Prince of Wales said he wanted to ‘go a step further’ than his family and bring real change to the causes he supports.

Speaking to journalists on the last day of his visit to Singapore for the Earthshot Prize awards, William praised the royal family’s work “spotlighting” causes, but said he wanted to do more than just be a patron.

The King, who is patron or president of more than 400 organisations, founded the Prince’s Trust and The Prince’s Foundation charities, while the PWCF has awarded more than £70 million to good causes.

Charles will also host a reception at Buckingham Palace on his birthday for 400 nurses and midwives, as part of this year’s NHS 75 celebrations.

The NHS choir is set to perform a surprise birthday song in his honour.

In the evening, Charles is expected to be honoured with a party for close family and friends at Clarence House.

It was reported that his youngest son, the Duke of Sussex and the Duchess of Sussex turned down an invitation, but Harry and Meghan’s team has insisted they were not invited.

A spokesperson for the Sussexes said: “In response to UK media headlines, there has been no contact regarding an invitation to His Majesty’s upcoming birthday.”

On the eve of his birthday, the King will join fellow 75-year-olds for a special party at Highgrove.

The monarch will gather at his Gloucestershire home on Monday with community champions who were, like him, born in 1948 as part of the generation of post-Second World War baby boomers.

The afternoon tea, featuring dancing with live music from a local rock choir, will also mark the 75th anniversaries of the NHS and the Windrush generation in 2023.

TV star Jay Blades, who bonded with the King over a shared interest in heritage and crafts in an episode of the BBC’s The Repair Shop, will also be there as an ambassador for Charles’s charity, The Prince’s Foundation, which is hosting the day.

Sitters from the Windrush: Portraits Of A Pioneering Generation – a series of paintings commissioned by the King to honour the accomplishments of the Windrush generation and those that followed – have been invited as special guests.

Party-goers attending are local residents who were nominated by friends, family and neighbours for their community work or as an opportunity to socialise, with the final guestlist being chosen by ballot.

The event, held in the Orchard Room at Highgrove, will also include an original music composition by local teenage gardening enthusiast Bill Goulding.

The 14-year-old is a regular visitor to the Highgrove Gardens.

The King and Queen’s private home near Tetbury is Charles’s beloved country retreat, which he acquired in 1980.

He spent decades transforming the gardens around the house.

At the start of the year, Highgrove ran the foundation’s winter warmers project, where hundreds of people from the local community enjoyed free hot drinks and soup, craft, board games and knitting in the Orchard Room to help combat loneliness and the cost-of-living crisis.

A similar birthday party is being held for the local community at Dumfries House in Ayrshire on Monday.

Prince Charles Philip Arthur George was born on November 14 1948 at Buckingham Palace – the first child of the future Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh.

As the Prince of Wales, he was the nation’s longest serving heir to the throne, and he became King on September 8 last year on the death of his mother, the late Queen.

The King, who was crowned in May, was the oldest British monarch in history at a coronation.

As well as his crowning, Charles has had a busy 2023, with three overseas state visits to Germany, France and Kenya and, earlier this week, his first state opening of Parliament as monarch.