Last week’s meeting was well attended with 27 attending in person and another 11 attending on-line. Visiting the meeting were Phoebe Gardner. Co-founder of Bardee, as winner of the 2022 Environmental Sustainability Award, Anil Changaroth Rotarian and Sergeant of Arms and organiser of the volunteer workforce for the Singapore Rotary International convention in 2024, as well as Karen Loblay AM, a 20 year Rotary Club of Sydney member who attended on-line.
President Reg presented Phoebe Gardner with the 2022 Environmental Sustainability Award, deferred for a week due to a production line fire at Bardee's plant on the morning of the planned Award presentation on 2 June. The citation can be read below.
In responding to the presentation Phoebe told the story of Bardee’s creation, starting in the grounds of the University of Melbourne with a makeshift food scrap processor - a repurposed garden chipper / shredder from Bunnings, and clearing, with the help of friends, food waste dumped in the University car-park on Fridays which had to be cleared over the weekend.
After 3 years, and with venture capital investment, Bardee has now created a state of the art production facility in Sunshine and already grown to 40 employees, and created nearly 1.2million kg of C02 offsets.
Their vision is to become a global force in transforming food waste into valuable, sustainable fertiliser and protein products for animal consumption using a state of the art vertical farming system that already creates nearly 20 tonnes of carbon offset per day. You can see Phoebe’s presentation by clicking this link to the evening meeting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toouWzudydk
Garry Fowler was the keynote speaker for the meeting, providing an engrossing update on development of the carbon calculator for Rotary Clubs to estimate their carbon emissions from meetings and other activities. The calculator has already been used to estimate carbon emissions for the Rotary Melbourne’s activities in 2021 and the purchased carbon offsets presented to the Club at the environment Sustainability - Food Waste event on 2 June.
Garry’s presentation and the accompanying Q&A can be viewed via this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toouWzudydk
This meeting had a third dimension which is what makes face-to-face gatherings so important. Before and after the meeting those present enjoyed the opportunity to mix and circulate and make connections. It was an inspiring and energising meeting. Thanks to the evening team - Yidan Xi, George Giamadakis, Sana Malik, Dasun Premadasa, Stephen Rando and Jo Mavros.
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY AWARD 2021-22
Awarded to Phoebe Gardner and Alexander Arnold
Citation
The Rotary Club of Melbourne Environmental Sustainability Award recognizes the distinguished service of Phoebe Gardner and Alexander Arnold towards Rotary International’s Seventh Area of Focus, Supporting the Environment.
Through this Award, Rotary Melbourne recognises and applauds Phoebe Gardner and Alexander Arnold’s willingness to put service above self with their important research work and establishment of a production facility that creates a circular food system using insects to reduce food waste.
Phoebe Gardner and Alexander Arnold co-founded Bardee which started with an idea in 2019. Bardee is an indigenous word that refers to a large Australian roundhead borer which is the larva of a beetle and is esteemed as a food by indigenous peoples. Phoebe is an architect and in 2019 received the Emerging Leader in Agriculture Award from the Royal Agriculture Society of Victoria. Alexander studied genetics, is a research scientist and a qualified entomologist. Phoebe and Alexander’s work in establishing a start-up operation was acknowledged also in 2019 on graduation from the University of Melbourne’s ‘Melbourne Accelerator Program.’
Their primary objective in the creation of Bardee is to have an impact in reshaping the global food system by transforming food waste into sustainable food ingredients. Bardee is doing this by growing and harvesting Black Soldier Fly whose larvae consumes a broad range of food waste and converts it into all-natural protein and oil for pet food, poultry and aqua feed and nutrient-rich organic fertilisers in a vertical high-tech facility in suburban Melbourne.Using food waste to generate fertiliser and feed reduces food scraps that go to landfill, significantly lowers greenhouse gas emissions, produces products that aid the production of quality protein as well as importantly making agriculture more sustainable.
Bardee is now the largest insect breeding, fertilizer and protein producer in Australia processing up to 10 tonnes of food waste every 8 hours, 6 days a week. Bardee is currently breeding about 1 billion flies which is one of the most productive fly breeding labs in the world and every tonne of protein produced offsets 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to planting 1,600 trees. Bardee have recently upgraded their production capabilities - the indoor breeding facility is world-class, technology is automated, is scalable and can handle large quantities of food waste.
With a current team of 30 highly skilled employees the expectation is to process 300 tonnes of food waste a day and daily offset 500 tonnes of carbon emissions. Phoebe and Alexander are social entrepreneurs committed to the expansion of global circular economy technology. A next step will be to move from the pet food industry into stock feed and a future goal is to achieve food for human consumption.
Presented on behalf of the Club by Professor John Thwaites AM
Signed: Reg N Smith OAM, President
2nd June 2022
