Future In Our Hands is a Norwegian NGO that works to reduce food waste, by aiming to update the law to meet the modern sustainable European standard.

To achieve this, they needed to direct public attention towards the outdated food waste law, and make it known that grocery stores were throwing away enough delicious and perfectly edible food to feed 1/3 of the country's population.

GOAL:

Get enough public buzz around the outdated food waste law to get Future In Our Hands new law suggestion up to discussion in the Norwegian Parliament.

OBJECTIVES:

The population was tired of hearing about food waste, thinking the food was probably thrown away for a reason.

It was time to break completely with our oftentimes serious and sad category: and do something fun.

On a 1 dumpster budget, Norwegian NGO Future In Our Hands managed to make The Norwegian Parliament legislate a new food waste law for the first time.

- Nation-wide media coverage within 24 hours, resulting in 4.1 Millions earned media within the first few days.

- 23% of total population reached

- The most popular social post in Future In Our Hands history (organically).

- As the Dumpster went viral, Norway's ministry of health, Norway's biggest food influencers and top politicians visited the Deli either on their own initiative through un-paid invites.

But most importantly we reached our main goal: enough people visited, reposted and cared about the Dumpster that our law suggestion made it to parliament, and a new Norwegian food waste law is being developed first time.

By transforming a green dumpster into a pop-up grocery store containing food discarded by the biggest grocery chains in the country, we blew up the press and social media in Norway in under 24 hours and got the Norwegian Government to legislate a new Food Waste Law.

The visible OOH installation invited the grocery chains to throw their expired food in our "store" instead of in their own dumpsters so people could pick it up legally, and invited people to pick up whatever they wanted.

1. In Norway you may risk up to three years in prison for dumpster diving.

The outdated food waste law in question is mostly technical and boring, but this one small paragraph stood out. And if there's one subculture that knows exactly how massive and delicious Norway’s food waste problem is, it's dumpster divers.

2. Norway is a wealthy country, and most people were scared of trash.

This gave the campaign added tension in the local market, who were already slowly changing their behavior towards expired food due to inflation. NABC target group interviews showed a lot of people thought the "expired food" in question might have been "thrown away for a good reason", but that they were reconsidering expired food in their own fridge that they would previously throw away without a thought due to inflation.