Follow the world’s first plastic mural trail
What do you do with your old plastic bottle tops?
Mine tend to go straight in the recycle bin once my cat finishes playing air hockey with them across the laminate floor, without a second thought, unless they’re the ones that remain attached to the bottle; you know, the new design where they whack you in the face every time you take a swig from your drink ( not very ergonomic, is it?).
In Stockport, there's a good reason to hold on to them, because those bottle tops have been used to create something quite remarkable…
Plastic Shed, a Stockport-based community recycling organisation, has created what they're calling the world's first recycled plastic mural trail, a series of large and permanent artworks made entirely from approximately 60,000 plastic bottle lids collected by schools, libraries, and locals from across the borough.
The trail features ten large-scale pollinator murals, each one depicting a different British species, from a buff-tailed bumblebee and peacock butterfly to a seven-spotted ladybird and rose chafer beetle. Every mural is installed in a green space somewhere in Stockport and celebrates our local wildlife.
How it came together
The project was years in the making and properly embedded in the community from the start. Educational packs were sent out to 60 local Stockport schools, reaching nearly 20,000 children. Ten schools were then selected to help design the pollinator illustrations, with every year group involved in exploring colour, shading, and detail. It's that research that fed into the final designs, which were created by artist Flazzle and brought to life by Plastic Shed's maker Caitlin, with each pollinator taking around four days to build by hand.
The mural backgrounds were assembled by schoolchildren themselves, each child placing a handful of lids onto the piece until the whole school had contributed. Then came installation across ten green spaces and parks in and around the town.
The result is a unique and interactive public art trail sitting in everyday community spaces; parks and urban greenery that Stopfordians are walking past every week.
They need more lids
Plastic Shed is currently collecting clean, dry plastic bottle tops for their next project, and they've made donating easy by placing orange collection stations at every Stockport library. They accept any type of plastic lid, any colour or size as long as it’s clean be sure to give your donations a thorough wash first.
If you can't get to a library, there are various collection points across Stockport at independent outlets including Jake's Shoes, Vernon Building Society and The Good Life in the town centre, Funky Monkey in Davenport, and Sainsbury's in Hazel Grove.
Go and discover the trail
The full trail map is downloadable from the Plastic Shed website below, so you can plan your route and find them all. It’s a lovely family activity that gets you out and about discovering parts of Stockport you’ve perhaps never been to before.
Not only is it a fantastically creative and innovative way of recycling that involves the entire community, but a striking piece of interactive public art that everyone can enjoy for years to come, that started off with a bottle top in a school classroom.
Find out more and download the trail map at plasticshed.org.
