Today, while shopping in the mall, I noticed the most peculiar thing. As I approached it, I observed the different buildings, traffic lights and roads. Buildings ranged from small shops to tall skyscrapers with lines of windows covering all four sides. It was such an amazing city! Before you ask, “How can a city fit inside a mall?”, I will have to confirm to you that it was a moblie model city. But this wasn’t just any old model city. This city was made entirely from recycled materials such as cardboard, milk cartons and bottles! It was such an amazing piece of work that I decided to post about it here on my blog. I have done some more research on it as well which I have added below.
Name: Visy Box World (rightly named Box Town as well which represents a small city with buildings, cars, people and a Visy building)
Creator: Warren Thomas
After seeing the Legoland display when it toured Australia, Warren Thomas decided to build Box World. He chose to build his own world completely out of recycled materials, and the project took him over 12 years to complete. The finished product is over 200 square metres!
I am so thrilled that I got the chance to see part of Warren Thomas’ impressive city. I closely examined some of the shops and found that they even had an inside to them! There was a Chinese takeaway shop and a bread shop with a window that revealed rows of bread. Every shop had a lot of detail put into it and looked just like a real shop but miniature. I also read on another website that apparently there were over 900 individual buildings representing things you would expect to find in a typical Australian city. The site said that there was even a ferris wheel made from a BMX bike wheel, a circus made from a striped carry bag and part of a cathedral was made from a tomato sauce bottle! Although I didn’t notice these in the part of Box World I saw today, I’m sure they would have been included somewhere on the complete model city. Talking about websites, have a look at the Visy website: www.visyrecycling.com.au
Besides the buildings and structure of the city, there were also many facts about Visy around the structure. One of them that I can remember went somewhat like, “Each year, all of the bottles Visy recycles can circle Australia 6 times”!
As this part of the model city goes on tour, it will probably move to another location at sometime. However, where ever the recycled city goes, it will always be an inspiration to start recycling to anyone who sees the fantastic work! Visy Box World really inspired me to be creative with what and how I recycle, and I hope it inspires others to do the same.