By opening the worlds first grocery chain from a dumpster, Norwegian NGO Future In Our Hands managed to generate massive attention around an outdated law and mad The Norwegian Parliament initiate e a new food waste law for the first time.

BACKGROUND:

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.

The Norwegian grocery stores were throwing away enough food to feed 1/3 of the country's population, and FIOH lacked the public support they needed to get the Norwegian Parliaments attention.

EXISTING CREATIVE IDEA:

FIOH had had an existing campaign called "stop the food waste", with an interactive website showing the fresh delicious breads being thrown in the trash by the food industry minute by minute. With this PR stunt we simply did the web site idea "for real", putting it out in the streets letting people taste the real breads and challenging the chains to take our side.

By opening a dumpster grocery chain filled with food waste, we invited the whole nation to dumpster dive legally for the first time.

With the help from a pro architect, we designed the dumpster so that it would be super photo friendly for Instagram, Snapchat and other social media.

PRIMARY GOAL:

Get the new food waste law into parliament.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Politicians and decision makers in the parliament.

APPROACH:

To get the attention of politicians and decision makers, we needed to make a cultural movement among the general public (not just enviromental activists).

Not an easy feat, with a general population sick and tired of hearing about food waste from depressing environmental campaigns for years. It was time to break completely with our category: and do something fun.

PRE-LAUNCH:

A few weeks beforehand we reached out to 20+ people previously engaged in the cause and got them to start writing chronicles.

In the days beforehand we started teasing the opening of a new nation-wide grocery chain opening, with online posts and posters promoting "free food" and a cool-looking brand.

We revealed our exclusive secret to the biggest news station only, who showed up with a live TV crew on our opening day.

LAUNCH:

The Dumpster Deli's were placed outside big grocery stores, providing a super visible placement while pulling people in to taste our trash.

We started with one dumpster, and after massive amount of requests to get the Dumpster to more cities more dumpsters are now in production.

The initial Dumpster had minimum 30 placements within the first few weeks, promoted through a location finder in a pinned story on Future In Our Hands instagram account.

The first Dumpster Deli covered all the major Norwegian news channels from TV as well as Newspapers within 24 hours, generating 4M+ in earned media and reaching 23% of the total population.

But most importantly: We reach our primary goal of getting The Norwegian Parliament invited Future In Our Hands to legislate a new law for the first time. It's being negotiated in the Parliament as we're writing this (!)

- The new food waste law made it it to parliament

- 4.1M+ in earned media

- 23% of total population reached organically

If there's one subculture that knows exactly how massive and delicious Norway’s food waste problem is, it's dumpster divers.

We expanded the dumpster diving subculture into a full-fledged Norwegian culture, by making it legal, and by giving the trash just as much love as new food gets through a delicious campaign drawing people in.

Dumpster diving has always been illegal in Norway.