Icelandic designers tackle food waste through a project called Cargo

The #Antenna2017 speakers were alarmed by the amount of food waste in their city and found a novel way to raise awareness.

Frustrated by the amount of fresh fruit (like apples, melons and bananas) that were found in dustbins in Iceland even though the country does not produce that type of fruit, two product designers decided to do something to raise awareness.

According to Yale's Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks, Iceland is the second greenest country in the world. However the Nordic country largely contributes to approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of wasted food globally. Most of which is imported year round.

#Antenna2017 speakers, Bjorn Steiner and Johanna Steelemann, say that they wanted to find a way to draw people's attention to the ton of food waste in their country. This is how their graduation project, Cargo, was born.

For the project they looked at what products were readily available for export in Iceland and these turned out to be fish (cod) and aluminium. Then through product design, they went about detailing the journey that aluminium makes from when it is mined until it is shipped back to the country in the form of cans and other products.

They said that ultimately design was also a way of talking about hidden systems that can be illuminated to help us understand the world around us.