100,000 cans of food turned into huge sculptures to fight hunger

Talk about a "can-do" attitude!

Take 27 teams of architects and engineers, add close to 100,000 cans of food and what do you get? Well, an eight foot tall owl, an enormous hammer of Thor and a replica of the Statue of Liberty's torch to start. And it's all for a good cause.

Canstruction is hosting its 22nd annual event in lower Manhattan where teams build impressive and intricate sculptures entirely out of canned foods. The goal is to "end hunger one can at a time," said Jennifer Greene who volunteers with Canstruction.

When the statues are "de-can-structed," the charity donates the cans to New York based food rescue organization City Harvest.

"At the end of this event we'll take the cans back to our facility and we'll repack it and distribute it to 500 food programs in the five boroughs," said Lisa Sposato with City Harvest.

According to Sposato, City Harvest is the world's first food rescue organization. They collect unused foods from bakeries, grocers and restaurants and deliver the goods to shelters and anyone fighting hunger.

"This is a time where one out of five families is struggling to put a meal on their table and these cans will help to keep the shelves stocked," Sposato added.

"Our sculpture is called balanced meal, and the idea is that it's a circus seal balancing a ball of tuna on its head," said one Canstruction team member.

Along with cans of tuna the team also used veggies. "It's a meal that has all the food groups so they could literally take out cans and feed them to people as a full meal."

Wall-E and Eve make an appearance as does a green bean constructed subway entrance. A towering "big apple" defies gravity as the middle has huge bites taken out of it, and 6,0000 cans of pineapple came together to construct an ear cleverly named "Van Go Away Hunger."

The teams said their engineering and architectural backgrounds helped them plan and construct and the huge structures, and it's the community contribution that makes this event worth the work.

Said a Canstruction constructor, "it's really cool its fun to be part of and event like this and actually build its also really fun to do something for the community, and all these cans will be donated which is great."

The statues will be on display at Brookfield Plaza in lower Manhattan until November 20th. Admission is free, but Cantruction asks visitors to bring a can of food to donate.

You can learn more on the organization's website, www.canstruction.org.