LatinaLista — One man’s trash is another man’s — furniture!
In São Paulo, Brazil — a city with a population of almost 40 million people, like any big city, throws away a lot of trash.
Yet, in São Paulo, aluminum is recycled in a new way that has launched a project dubbed Can City.
Can City is the result of a process that involves using a mobile foundry to smelt collected aluminum cans fueled with nothing more than waste vegetable oils collected from local cafes and turning that into decorative aluminum stools.
All the tools and the smelting process are made from salvaged materials and a “scrap beer barrel.”
Waste collectors known as Catadores mine the streets for materials to produce a furniture series with vernacular aesthetic, providing a portrait of the streets.
The hope for the project is that Can City can be a source of future income for the Catadores in which they “can adopt this system to make use of free metal and free fuel to produce an infinite range of individually crafted aluminum items.”
Can City from Studio Swine on Vimeo.
