Nigerian-born environment and sustainability consultant, Canon Chimenem Otto, FRSA, has been appointed as a fellow by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) for his social impact in the United Kingdom and Africa.
The RSA fellowship is awarded in recognition of people whom the organisation’s judges deem to have made outstanding achievements for social progress and development.
Canon Otto’s remarkable efforts through his insistent strategic advocacy reflect his commitment to restoring the Earth’s fast-degrading environment from breakage, propagation of sustainability across the world, and driving a lasting change through sustainability policy reforms across and amongst governments, corporations and communities, earned him recognition for the esteemed RSA fellowship.
With more than 10 years of experience as a social entrepreneur, community organizer and sustainability consultant, Otto Canon has worked with multilateral organizations across various sectors and has helped to design, implement, and scale several social programs. This has earned him several awards from The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, State Governors, Non-State Organisations, and Monarchs.
In 2016, he founded CleanCyclers Africa to recycle plastics and paper waste, plant trees to mitigate climate change, and also promote these practices as a lifestyle in achieving a sustainable environment, healthy communities and healthy citizens.
CleanCyclers is one of the leading environmental sustainability social enterprises in Nigeria, and over the years Otto Canon has worked with over 5,000 volunteers across 5 countries, and they have recycled over 10,000 tonnes of plastics and planted more than 25,000 trees.
He has led his team in sensitizing over 100,000 children, youth and adults on environmental issues bothering around waste management, recycling, pollution, and climate change, as well as their prospective solutions. Otto Canon is a member of the Nigerian Environmental Society (NES), the Waste management association of Nigeria (WAMASON), the recycling association of Nigeria (RAN), and Chattered Management Institute England, United Kingdom.
His vision is to create an inclusive participatory and mutually benefiting society where it is everybody’s responsibility to recycle waste and also protect the environment from climate change.
Otto Canon joins other notable past RSA fellows such as Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, Nelson Mandela, David Attenborough, Tim Berners-Lee and many others.
Founded in 1754 by William Shipley as the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, it was granted a Royal Charter in 1847, and the right to use the term “Royal” in its name by King Edward VII in 1908, RSA is over 260 years old.