By prompting smiles while encouraging respect for the environment, these 7 cute recycling bins help maintain cleaner & greener public places and spaces.
Sapporo Surprise
(images via: MIKI Yoshihito)
Count on Japan to ensure anything and everything is as cute as it could possibly be… and then somehow evoke something terrifying once the finished product is put on public display. Take this creepy-cute quartet of recycle bins located in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo. Flickr user MIKI Yoshihito (´･ω･) manages to capture the uncomfortable combination of happiness and horror embodied in these cross-eyed bins designed to accept glass, plastic, steel and aluminum bottles and cans.
(image via: Japan Farmers Markets)
Lest one write off the curious faces on those Sapporo recycle bins as a one-off attempt at public beautification, we offer the trio of bins above. Though still cross-eyed, the bins pull off the anthropomorphism theme slightly more successfully thanks to their rounder “mouths”.
A Noble Porpoise
(image via: Patrick Giblin)
No cetacean needed for this compact but cute plastic recycling bin at Webster University in Hua Hin, Thailand. Won’t anyone think of the childr- er, dolphins? Maybe a cartoon-ized version of a marine mammal will get us landlubbers thinking more seriously about the toxic plastic waste that pollutes our finned friends’ oceanic playground.
Cows & Effect
(image via: Hoxton Councillors)
Have you “herd” about the cute cow bins on Shepherdess Walk, Hoxton, London UK? Well you have now, and once heard, you won’t soon forget… to recycle! Never mind the fact that cows and cattle are one of the world’s most potent sources of greenhouse gasses, even though that’s a reasonable beef best discussed at an udder time.
