Galveston sandcastle competition plans to break a world record this year

There's just a few weeks to go until Galveston sees around 20,000 people descend on its beaches to watch epic sand structures rise up out of the seaside for this year's sandcastle competition.

But this year that's not all the crowds will be doing.

The American Institue of Architects, which organizes the event, has teamed up with the city to attempt to break the world record for the amount of cans collected in one day in an effort to make the big clean up afterward a little more exciting than normal.

Teams of volunteers will be patrolling to ensure the thousands of visitors pitch in and help by disposing of their cans in one of dozens of collection stations set up all along Stewart beach.

The target to get into the Guinness Book of World Records is 160,000 cans collected within eight hours on the day of the competition, May 31. Organizers must beat the current record held by Habitat for Humanity in Evansville, Indiana.

Keen collectors can save up cans at home in the days before the event. As long as cans are deposited at the collecting stations within those eight hours, they will count toward the record attempt.

"Twenty-thousand people, that's alot of bottles and cans," said Steve Stelzer from the sandcastle committee at AIA Houston. "The city had been wanting to promote recycling anyway, so with the sandcastle event going on it was a match made in heaven."

Galveston has dedicated the entire month of May to finding ways to encourage people to keep the island cleaner, with a special emphasis on recycling.

"Typically (cans on the beach) are not a huge problem. We wanted to promote the idea of recycling to folks from here, and for visitors," said Paul Booth, Environmental Services Superintendent for the City of Galveston, which was happy to partner with the annual sand sculptors.

The event will add an extra dimension to the sandcastle competition, Galveston's second-largest revenue generating event, behind only Mardi Gras, according to AIA.

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Galveston sandcastle competition plans to break a world record this year