Rob Anderson is a chemical engineer who has been a member of the Rotary Club of Canterbury since 2019. Over COVID he volunteered heavily for ESRAG (Rotary’s Environmental Sustainability Action Group). In early 2024 with Rotarians from Sydney and San Diego, he co-founded Climateers, a for-profit venture to support food waste reduction and other climate solutions.
Almost a third of all food made is wasted. If food waste was a country it would be ranked third behind China and USA as a greenhouse gas emitter. In 2021 Sustainability Victorian identified food waste as a $6 billion opportunity in Victoria.
On September 11th Climateers will run the Victorian Food Waste Action Summit and in early October the Boroondara Food Action Summit at Hawthorn Town Hall to bring together stakeholders to collaborate and tackle the problems of food waste and food insecurity.
In July Climateers will onboard ten interns from Universities including Deakin, Swinburne and Monash to participate in a program culminating in the Action Summits.
As respected community leaders Rotary is uniquely positioned to support these students and help bring together local government, food rescue nonprofits, schools, food businesses and citizens to collaborate so that together we reduce food waste and the number of people going hungry in our local community.
Rob’s presentation will explain the program and opportunity in more detail as to how the club can benefit by getting involved and how it can build on the work done by ForAMeal to provide more food relief to those in need.