David Sivyer
Founder and board member
David founded Feedback Organic in 2013. He is an advocate for sustainable urban food systems, built on circularity, community and environmental wellbeing.
Collecting food waste
since 2013.
We've collected and composted food waste since 2013, starting on a farm and now running a weekly service in Sydney and the Hunter.
Our story
From a farm
From a farm
to a weekly service.
The farm
We started on a farm in the Barrington Tops, collecting food waste and composting it.
The urban farms
From there we ran urban farms in Newcastle, growing food in that compost.
Collection today
Today we run a weekly food waste collection in Sydney and the Hunter.
Partner farms
We no longer run our own farm. We collect food waste every week in Sydney and the Hunter, with our collection partner Remondis. Partner farms like Pocket City Farms, an urban farm in Sydney, host visits and workshops, and a farm visit today means visiting one of them.
We collect the bins on a fixed day each week. We supply and deliver the kit, set up each site, support the team, and report on what's collected.
The board
Governed by
Governed by
a board of directors.
Christina Robberds
Chair
Christina has led programs and operations across the arts, sustainability and local government, with a collaborative approach to governance. She potters in her garden and shares the homegrown herbs and vegetables with family and friends.
Lachlan James
Director
Lachlan is a marketing, customer experience and innovation specialist with 18 years' experience across Australia, London and New York.
Alex Sol Watts
Director
Alex is an award-winning advertising strategist, business leader and consultant who has worked with local and global brands. Outside work, Alex keeps bees and ferments, and will happily tell you about both.
Ash Hardman
Secretary
Ash is a senior in-house lawyer with a background in commercial law and technology. She is a mum of two kids and thousands of earthworms.
Alena Nolan
Director, Sales and Business Development
Alena has spent a decade leading sales teams and commercial growth across the automotive, insurance, software and EV industries. At home she tends her own worm farm.
Irina Salikhova
Treasurer
Irina brings financial leadership, audit and advisory experience to the board, with strong commercial and governance expertise.
What we can show
Provable
Provable
history.
- 2.5 million litres
- of food waste kept out of landfill through FO's urban farms, 2013 to 2023
- 45+ tonnes
- of food grown on those farms in that time
- 89 tonnes
- collected from Hunter businesses since June 2021From collection invoice records to August 2026
Standing
A registered
A registered
charity.
Feedback Organic Recovery Limited (ABN 75 664 667 127) has been registered with the ACNC as a charity, and endorsed as a Deductible Gift Recipient, since 1 July 2024. You can check us on ABN Lookup or the ACNC register.
Our founder, David Sivyer, gave a TEDx talk on a circular economy approach to food waste: watch the TEDxCooks Hill talk.
Acknowledgement of Country
We work on the lands of the Gadigal, Awabakal and Worimi peoples. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.