The Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Toronto, in partnership with Canada Circular Hotspot, is organizing a webinar series called “Making the Circular Economy Real”. These webinars will continue throughout 2020 and 2021, with the fourth one being organized on December 8, themed "Food processing & the Circular Economy".
In this webinar, Cher Mereweather from Provision Coalition and Andrew McCue from Metabolic will share their insights and experiences around the food processing sector in the Guelph-Wellington County region and in the Netherlands.
Guelph and Wellington County were awarded a Smart Cities Challenge prize in 2019, to implement their vision of ‘Our Food Future’. Outcomes of this work include new circular food businesses, increasing economic revenues by reducing and re-imagining food waste and increasing access to affordable, nutritious food.
This webinar will present an update on this work, with a focus of how circular economy principles are being infused into food processing systems and how the Netherlands’ well-developed knowledge in this space, is being deployed to complement made-in-Canada expertise.
The session will be moderated by Paul van der Werf, PhD., Senior Consultant at AET Group Inc.
Cher Mereweather, Provision Coalition
Cher Mereweather is one of Canada’s leaders in food and beverage industry sustainability. She has dedicated her 20-year career to enabling food and beverage companies to embrace sustainability, purpose and circularity in order to create a more resilient food system, one company at a time.
Before founding Provision in 2012, Cher had established and directed the Sustainability Consulting Business Unit at NSF International and held executive positions with the Canadian agri-food think tank, the George Morris Centre. She was awarded the Canadian Grocer Generation Next award for leadership in sustainability and sits on the Board of Directors for the National Zero Waste Council and Birds Canada.
Andrew McCue, Metabolic
Andrew McCue has been involved in food and food systems for many years. Aiming to bring quality, varied, and sustainable food to larger populations, he pursued work on sustainable agriculture with both soil-based and hydroponic farms. Towards the end of this period Andrew worked as a key account manager helping nascent hydroponic farms to build their businesses. Frustrated with the scale of environmental and social issues he saw in the food system, Andrew took to the teachings of Donella Meadows and began to pursue systems thinking as a way to understand the roadblocks continually encountered in the industry. From this perspective, it became clear that redesigning the relationship between urban regions and the food they consume was going to be key in unlocking the change needed to build a sustainable and just food system.
The reputation of the Netherlands as a hub of sustainable cities and high tech agriculture, drew Andrew to Amsterdam where he joined Metabolic as a sustainability consultant and business developer for projects in Agrifood and Circular Cities. Andrew is passionate about food and cities, and even more so about making the connections needed to build a fundamentally sustainable, just, and enjoyable future.
Paul van der Werf, AET Group (moderator)
Paul is a senior consultant with AET Group Inc. He was educated at the University of Guelph and Western University’s Department of Geography, where in 2018 he completed a PhD, with research focused on improving food waste measurement and developing a successful intervention to reduce household food waste.
Paul is a recognized waste management expert with more than 27 years of national and international experience. His key areas of expertise include waste composition analysis and food and organic waste management. He is a long-time waste management commentator and has published more than 135 articles on various aspects of waste management, in Canada and abroad.
About the webinar series
Our key objectives for organizing the webinars include increasing participant knowledge, expanding networks, showing the circular economy in real world action and inspiring the development of new circular economy projects in Ontario and across Canada.
Contact us
Are you interested in connecting with Dutch parties, for inspiration, networking or doing business? We would love to hear from you, so feel free to reach out to our Economic Affairs team at tor-ea@minbuza.nl.