World’s biggest recycled artwork

Aluminun Cans. dubbed Precious Metal -This has taken a team of artists a week to complete and can only be fully viewed from the air.

This is Recycle Week (22-28 June 2009), and in Sussex England, along the coastline of the dramatic chalk cliffs. over 1/2 million cans were assembled in a design with the title: Keep It Going Recycle.

In the run up to National Recycling Week 2009, the artistic collaboration between lead artist Robert Bradford and aerial photographer Jason Hawkes will recreate a classic 1950’s Coca Cola billboard measuring over 100m in length. …built by 100 volunteers to make a BIG statement.

The artwork has been designed to boost public awareness of recycling benefits, in the hope that people will be inspired to recycle more. If everyone in the UK recycled just one aluminium drink can per week, it would be the CO2 equivalent of taking 2000 cars of the road.
Coca-Cola is working with WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) to install Recycle Zones around the UK to help make it easier for people to recycle their cans and bottles when they’re out and about - in places like shopping centres, theme parks, airports, university campuses and at outdoor events. Launched a year ago, there are now 20 active Recycle Zones with another 60 on the way before 2011. Already over 20 tonnes of recycled materials have been collected through Recycle Zones’ bins.

The Press Release:

Coca-Cola GB unveils the world’s biggest recycled artwork to mark Recycle Week

A spectacular 50m artwork made solely from used aluminium cans has been unveiled on top of the chalk cliffs of the Sussex coastline to mark the beginning of Recycle Week (22-28 June 2009).

Transforming thousands of used aluminium collected from around Great Britain into the world’s largest recycled artwork - dubbed Precious Metal - has taken a team of artists a week to complete and can only be fully viewed from the air. The artwork - inspired by a classic 1949 summer poster from The Coca-Cola Company archives of a swimsuit-clad lady relaxing in the sun - is designed to inspire consumers to recycle more this summer through reminding them of the inherent value of empty cans and bottles.

Recycling aluminium is 20 times more energy-efficient than making it from scratch1. At the end of Recycle Week each of the 200,000 cans will be recycled saving enough energy to keep a television running for seventy years2.

Liz Lowe, Citizenship Manager at Coca-Cola Great Britain, said: “Old cans aren’t just waste, they’re precious metal. They can live forever through recycling, to be used time and time again to make a whole number of new things saving huge amounts of energy and raw materials.

“With this simple message want to inspire people to think twice about binning their empty bottles and cans…an empty drinks can that you recycle today could be back on the shelf as a brand new one in just six weeks3.”

Laura Underwood, spokesperson for WRAP said “Protecting the environment is one of the biggest challenges facing all of us and the scale of this artwork represents the size of the issue. We hope that Coca-Cola’s piece will inspire consumers to recycle more - not just during Recycle Week - but into the future.”

The Precious Metal project is the latest in a series of Coke initiatives to remind consumers of the benefits of recycling soft drink cans and bottles by illustrating that packaging is not just waste, but can have a second life through recycling.

http://presscentre.coca-cola.co.uk/viewnews/em_coke_em_recycles_the_past_in_a_precious_metal_masterpiece