What Do You Do With 340 Bikes About To Be Recycled?

As we have written before, recycling is one of the world’s most important tasks, and we’re continuously getting better at it. However, what about when it comes to large quantities of things? What do we do with them? It’s easy to compress recycled paper into huge cubes ready to be processed into new paper. Cell phones are also getting recycled and crushed into itty bitty pieces and then sorted into separate materials before processing. But what do you do with 340 used bikes that are lying around waiting to be processed?

Well, you could do exactly what artists Mark Grieve and Ilana Spector did. They created the world’s largest recycled bike obelisk. Of course, it was dubbed the “Cyclisk” and stands on a street corner in Santa Rosa. It took 340 used bikes, and they were compiled into blocks that were later assembled on site.

I don’t know if I think it’s ugly or beautiful. The intricate patterns make me want to say that it is beautiful, but I can’t imagine what it will look like as soon as it starts to rust. Is it safe or will the entire thing crumble to its doom on a hot summer day when the weld connections no longer hold? I guess they have figured out a solution for that, but still, would you want this obelisk in your neighborhood? It’s definitely a feat worth mentioning though.