2024 Rotary Melbourne Environment Award for World Environment Day
Guest Speaker Claire Moore, Sweet Justice
Venue 12.30 for 12.50 - 2.00pm @ No35 Sofitel on Collins also Online via Zoom
Bookings: https://events.humanitix.com/rotary-melb-5-jun
The Rotary Melbourne Environment and Sustainability Award was initiated in the Club’s Centenary year. The focus of the E&S Award is to to recognize outstanding innovative leadership in creating awareness and changing behaviors towards Supporting the Environment.
This year it was decided that the Award should recognise the commitment of young people to address environmental sustainability issues. All secondary schools in Metropolitan Melbourne were invited to apply. The entries were reviewed by the 2024 E&S Award Panel of Barbara Yerondais (Chair), Sharann Johnson and Phillip Endersbee. Their decision has been endorsed by the Club’s E&S Committee and RM Board. The Awardee school will be announced at the Club’s lunch this Wednesday, 5 June 24 and the Awardee school’s E&S leaders will outline their school’s environmental sustainability focus and key projects.
Claire Moore, the 2021 Environment and Sustainability Awardee will present the Award to the winning school.
Claire Moore founded Sweet Justice in 2020. Sweet Justice is a successful rehabilitation program that educates young male detainees at the Malmsbury and Parkville Youth Justice Centres in the practice of beekeeping. It is likely that the Beechworth Correctional Centre will be included in the program which is a possibility for wider application in Australia through Commonwealth and State Governments correctional facilities.
Sweet Justice’s growing beekeeping operations include honey production, pollination services, and queen bee breeding, allowing us to create employment pathways for parolees trained in beekeeping by Sweet Justice. Our Past President, Quin Scalzo has been providing mentoring to Claire and her colleagues.
In our Club’s centenary the Board approved an amount of $3000 for an Annual Environment Sustainability Award to recognize outstanding innovative leadership in creating awareness and changing behaviors towards Supporting the Environment.
At this event Manon Beauchamp-Tardieu – Little Green Panda & Environmental Social Entrepreneur and recipient of Rotary Melbourne Environmental Sustainability Award - Commendation in 2022 will also be in attendance.
Manon worked as a designer in the fashion industry with some of the world’s biggest fashion brands where she witnessed first-hand the harmful impact waste emanating from fast fashion has on the environment. This experience led Manon to become the Founder and Managing Director of Little Green Panda which makes a range of products that are eco-friendly eliminating environmentally unfriendly single-use plastics that cause immense harm to the world’s oceans, waterways and environment.
The Little Green Panda range of products include The Friendly Cup produced from plant puree that is 100% home compostable and made to disappear; non-toxic fully compostable Sugar Cane drinking straws also designed to disappear like a piece of fruit and Coffee Cutlery that is up-cycling unwanted coffee grounds destined for landfill.
Manon at Little Green Panda is on a journey to re-imagine disposable plastic in a sustainable way and by example make a difference.
