The Plastic Monument installation by the London design studio VATRAA is made up of thousands of water bottles stacked on top of each other. It is meant to show how much pollution there is in the world. The piece of art is similar to the trilithons at England's 5,000-year-old Stonehenge, which are made of two standing stones that hold up a lintel. It's meant to be a new take on the ancient stone circle, but it's made of a much more troublesome material.
For the installation, VATRAA used 16,000 plastic bottles and wrapped them in a metal mesh to give them shape and mimic the rough shape of the ancient trilithons. The piece was the winner of a National Geographic contest to raise awareness about plastic pollution. It is 22 feet tall, which is the same height as the highest point of Stonehenge. The installation will stay in Milan for the next year, but VATRAA hopes that it could travel the world after that and get more people to think about the ocean of plastic trash that people are leaving behind as their legacy.
Selena Mattei