50 Shades by Angus Hyland

Pentagram partner, Angus Hyland, wanted to create a simple visual that would make recycling feel less like something you should do and more like something you want to do. For inspiration, he turned to the universal symbol for recycling – as well as last year’s must-read novel.

“I’ve always loved the recycling symbol, designed by Gary Anderson in 1970. It’s a Möbius strip, with the arrows providing direction and a sense of action. It looks to me influenced by another big international symbol, created slightly earlier, the woolmark – and my version, being stripy, marries the two, making the original warmer and more fluid.”

“It’s hand-drawn, to highlight the importance of individual action. And it features many different shades of green, because although green is a shorthand for the environment, for some reason graphically we tend to treat it as a block colour, ignoring all the variety that occurs in nature. So I decided to use it in as many shades as possible, highlighting both the variety in nature and the many different ways to save the planet. As an added bonus, it also gave me a nice pun for the title.”

Why?

Making steel from recycled tins and cans takes 75% less energy than making steel from scratch.

How?

Find out what you can recycle and where you can recycle it at this handy website.