12 Sculptures Made From Recycled Materials

For time immemorial, human beings have generated trash … lots and lots of trash. And from the aqueducts and municipal dumps of ancient times to the massive landfills of today, we’ve tried all kinds of ways to get rid of it. However, when trash makes its way into the right hands, it can be turned from mere waste into something imaginative and daring.

Creative folks around the world have seen old materials as more than just their previous lives, looking instead to their futures. These works show the truth of that age-old statement: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” With materials ranging from old cars to scrap metal to glass bottles and discarded beach chairs, artists have gone above and beyond to reimagine how waste is thought about and used. Some projects, like a giant whale made out of polyethylene in New Mexico, are direct calls to action to reduce our footprint on the Earth.

Others, such as a homestead full of sculptures built from ship parts, were simply designed on a whim by their creators. All of them showcase the innate power of outsider art to surprise and inspire us. Also called upcycled or eco-art, this practice involves turning everyday waste like plastic, glass, metal, textiles, and paper into creative works.

Materials that would normally end up in landfills are, instead, transformed into imaginative forms that compel us to rethink our ideas of worth and beauty. | Tire Sculptures of Breighner’s Tire Center | Tires, coat hangers, turf | Littlestown, Pennsylvania | Large animal sculptures including a lion and fire-breathing dragon | | Frontera Sculpture Oasis | Scavenged and donated materials | Luna County, New Mexico | Sculpture garden in the Chihuahuan Desert | | Rainbow Sea Container | Sea containers | Fremantle, Australia | Nine containers forming a 29-foot-tall rainbow arch | | The Swimmer - Traces of Man | Discarded chairs, parasols, beach trash | Skanör med Falsterbo, Sweden | Sculpture highlighting the environmental impact of discarded goods | | Volkswagen Spider Sculpture | Volkswagen Beetle and metal | Palm Springs, California | 28-foot-tall spider | | The Raven’s Nest | Scrap metal and old ship parts | Reykjavik, Iceland | Evolving sculpture park with Viking warriors and other figures | | Schaefer’s Auto Art | Reused automobiles | Erie, Pennsylvania | Roadside sculptures made from reimagined cars | | Blenko Man | Recycled Blenko glass | Weston, West Virginia | Sculpture made from collected glass | | Ernesto Che Guevara Statue | Scrap iron and mechanical parts | El Alto, Bolivia | 30-foot-tall statue made from engines, cogs, and wheels | | Árbol de la Sidra | Glass cider bottles | Gijón, Spain | Monument made from cider bottles | | Ethyl the Whale | Recycled polyethylene | Santa Fe, New Mexico | 82-foot-long recycled plastic sculpture | | Recycled Roadrunner Statue | Shoes, cell phones, bike parts, and other recycled materials | Las Cruces, New Mexico | 20-foot-tall roadrunner | The dragon was such a hit that it was featured in the Gettysburg and Hanover Halloween parades. blimpcaptain / Atlas Obscura User **1. Tire Sculptures of Breighner’s Tire Center** 📍 Littlestown, Pennsylvania When Noah Russell, an employee at Breighner’s Tire Center, was challenged by his boss to build a tire float for a local parade, he created a massive lion that won first place. Riding this high, he entered the following year with an eight-foot-tall, fire-breathing dragon made out of coat hangers, turf tires, and a can of bucane.(Unsurprisingly, he won again.) Russell followed these creations with an intricate headless horseman, a horned stag, and a reef with several aquatic animals.

Along with the two prize-winning creatures, these spectacles now sit in front of Breighner’s storefront, where they’ve become a favorite landmark for people traveling along Hanover Pike. A daily dose of hidden gems to visit, extraordinary places to eat and wondrous stories from around the world. Your newsletter subscriptions with us are subject to Atlas Obscura's Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

Artist Taras Mychalewych created the work as a tribute to Mother Earth after his car blew up in the very same desert while he was on a cross-country drive. The garden’s makeshift biosphere is formed out of scavenged and donated materials, from bricks to bottles, and was designed to mingle with the surrounding agave and cholla. One colorful display represents a regional mariachi band, welcoming people to the borderlands, while another portion feels directly inspired by Los Angeles’s Watts Towers.