A 3.8 metre 10 cent coin, constructed from more than one thousand recycled bottles and 300kg of laser cut steel, now sits in front of Customs House at Circular Quay.

Why? To promote two initiatives: Cash for Containers, a proposed statewide recycling program, and Envirobank, a new recycling scheme being championed by the City of Sydney.

Paper Moose, a Sydney-based creative agency, designed and built the striking blue sculpture, which lights up at sunset thanks to 50 metres of LED lighting.

“Our goal was to convey a message about recycling in a bold and elegant way,” says the project’s head Designer, Joshua Flowers. “Having decided on the coin motif, we experimented with scale and materials and found that at a striking three metres tall, we were able to discern the bottles as pixels. By laser cutting the structure out of steel, we achieved a beautifully minimalist frame with an incredible level of accuracy and structural integrity.”