Recycling symbol

The symbol originated on the first Earth Day in 1970, created by Gary Anderson, then a 23-year-old student for the Container Corporation of America.

[2] Container Corporation of America, a large producer of recycled paperboard, sponsored a contest for art and design students at high schools and colleges across the country to raise awareness of environmental issues.

The contest, which drew more than 500 submissions, was won by Gary Anderson, whose entry was the image now known as the universal recycling symbol.

Existing single half-twist variants of the logo do not generally agree on which of the arrows is the one to fold underneath.

The logo is usually displayed with the arrows circulating clockwise, but the underlying Möbius strip exists in two topologically distinct mirror-image forms of opposite handedness.

This message is reinforced by the circular inscription, "THIS PROJECT WAS ENVIRONMENTALLY UNFRIENDLY", surrounding the modified logo.

The satirical logo appears in the 1998 catalog of an installation art work in Bayonne, New Jersey, in which the artist Steven Pippin modified a row of glass-doored washing machines in a laundromat to operate as giant cameras.

The front-loading washing machines were then used to develop and process the 24 inch (61 cm) diameter circular film negatives.

The Universal Recycling Symbol, here rendered with a black outline and green fill. Both filled and outline versions of the symbol are in use. Two of the arrows fold over each other and one fold under.
Outline version. In this example, all the arrows are folding under themselves.
Taiwan 's recycling symbol features the use of negative space to also create arrows pointing outward.