Plastic bags: Fossano makes a new “Guinness World Record”

by Francesco Rasero

Today, on Saturday November the 27th, in Fossano (Cuneo), the new Guinness World Record was set for the largest sculpture in the world made of plastic bags. 120,000 discarded shopping bags were used to build a structure of 22 cubic meters that was shaped like the skyline of the nearby Mount Viso.

The event, which brought together hundreds of people in the central Castello Square, was organized within the European Week for Waste Reduction by the Sea Consortium, the City of Fossano and the E.R.I.C.A. cooperative, with support of the Vm Press, Novamont, ‘Porta la Sporta’, and Trs Radio Savigliano.

The sculpture was measured at 7.22 meters wide, 2 meters deep and 2.2 meters in height (from the base to the peak of Mount Viso) with and average height of 1.5 meters. It was made entirely of untreated wood and then covered and filled with bags, as required by the regulations of the Guinness Book of World Records.
At the end of the event, all of the materials were immediately recycled.

The record was validated on the spot, after a careful verification that lasted almost two hours, by the adjudicator Jack Brockbank, an official representative of the Guinness World Records society from London: “I am pleased to officially announce that from this moment Fossano officially holds the new world record”, he said to the applause of those present, before handing over the official certificate to the organizers.
The previous record for this type of sculpture belonged to the United States (specifically Los Angeles), who amassed 36,700 bags.

“The initiative has served to launch a strong symbolic message and raise awareness of the environmental impact of daily choices of each, with the objective being to adopt a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle and produce less waste”, says Roberto Cavallo, the president of the E.R.I.C.A. cooperative. “The bags were collected over the past two months and involved the population and the schools of the Sea Consortium, and organization that manages the waste in 54 municipalities in the province of Cuneo: we set ourselves the target of collecting 50,000 bags, however we have reached 120,000.”

A significant contribution to the record came from the primary schools of the local area, who were involved with the contest “I virtuosi del Guinness” (The virtuosos of Guinness – a competition to see which school could contribute the most plastic bags). Over 73 thousand bags were collected by the pupils, the area of Torre San Giorgio, and the class VB of Racconigi won first prizes for both categories.