Claire Kneller is the Executive Director of WRAP Asia Pacific. After working for the organisation for over 16 years, she is in her 12th job title and has been fortunate enough to work across an incredible number of teams and roles. This first-hand knowledge and experience was what led her to move to Australia to set up the Asia Pacific office.
Kneller studied English literature, Latin and Mediaeval studies at university. She worked in both the public and private sectors before joining WRAP.
“I’ve always been a bit of a tree hugger but honestly didn’t really know that much about what WRAP did before I joined. Now I am the person who looks through friend’s bins to check they are recycling correctly and takes food home from events in my Tupperware, so it doesn’t go to waste.”
Alongside Fight Food Waste (FFW), WRAP is a founding partner in the Stop Food Waste Australia (SFWA) initiative - the sister program to the Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre. Kneller spends half her time working with SFWA, so when FFW kindly offered to host WRAP from their headquarters in Adelaide, it provided a professional home.
WRAP’s major goal for the Asia Pacific region is to fix climate change. WRAP aims to deliver systemic change across the region's food, plastic and clothing economies. But more broadly, Kneller hopes that WRAP can demonstrate living a more sustainable life can be incredibly fulfilling. The biggest challenge WRAP faces in making these changes is the global food system.
“We still waste a third of the food we produce, and that is feeding climate change when it should be feeding people. We know how to fix this problem – strong policy and regulation, whole sector business collaboration and consumer behaviour change.”
WRAP Asia Pacific hopes to bring together regional partners and adapt to the local context. This is already happening with Stop Food Waste Australia, but more must be done. Kneller would like to see similar initiatives across the entire region.
When it comes to grocery and FMCG, everyone can be doing more. Supermarkets are one piece of the puzzle, but Kneller noted that more food is wasted in homes than elsewhere in the supply chain. What supermarkets can do is influence customer purchases. To do this, WRAP is working to help make product date labels clearer and easier to understand and remove the packaging for some items on the shelf. FMCG businesses need to look at the packaging - reducing or removing it, using different materials and eliminating problematic items. But they can also look further through the supply chain, changing manufacturing processes and decarbonising energy transport supplies.
WRAP is also a founding partner of the ANZPAC plastics pact, which is now well established. Kneller will be working on ways to drive member change and bringing the good practices from other pacts around the world to help.
Watch the video below to see more from Kneller and the WRAP Asia Pacific Launch event.
