While searching for sustainability projects in the Retail food industry – my daily task as ECOFFEE Project Manager – I stumbled upon this US based non-profit organization, Canstruction®.
Canstruction holds annual design and build competitions to construct fantastic, giant sized, structures made entirely out of canned food. In each city after the structures are built and the winners declared the creations go on view to the general public as giant art exhibits. At the close of the competitions all of the food used in the structures is donated to the local food banks for distribution to community emergency feeding programs.
Canned food is one of the least sustainable packaged food – if you think about the canned tuna industry for instance and the tons of not-recycled aluminium cans wasted each year. Waiting for this industry to find its way towards sustainability, I think that Canstruction can help raising awareness among consumers about sustainability and responsibility thanks to gamification. A great project that I hope is going to be repeated in other countries too.
