The unveiling of three new community designed glass banks

Earlier this month we celebrated the unveiling of three stunning new glass banks in Seacroft, Bramley and Crossgates! The new glass banks are the result of an exciting community project, run as part of our on-going glass recycling campaign.

In our research, we found that one way to encourage more people to use glass banks would be to make it a more fun and enjoyable experience for them. So we asked young people from Bramley, Seacroft and Crossgates to help us come up with some fun, colorful designs for the new glass banks. We’ve been working with BARCA, Fall Into Place and The Tribe Youth Group to encourage young people from these local communities to get involved.

The community groups organised some workshop sessions for young people to draw their visions for the glass banks, resulting in many lovely drawings that have helped local artists develop the final designs for the banks.

Young people at BARCA had the idea of a graffiti bottle for their glass bank in Bramley. So we used that as the main design. Mosaic-like triangles were also added, drawing from the other bottles in the original designs.

In Seacroft, young people at Fall Into Place came up with a lot of different bottle drawings, so their glass bank reflects that variety in a dynamic way through a series of colorful bottles of different shapes and sizes.

Last but not least, we have Crossgates. Young people at The Tribe Youth Group wanted a very colorful glass bank with a rainbow, a tree, some frogs and a glass bottle! Local artists have therefore combined all these elements together in the final design.

You can find out more about the designs in this short interview with our artist Natasha Joseph:

We loved seeing the community working together to bring positive change and celebrating the introduction of the new glass banks with games, sports and competitions.

We hope that with the new glass banks more people will make the most of the opportunity to recycle bottles and jars near to where they live.

If you’d like to find out more about the environmental impact of recycling glass in Leeds, check out our article here.

We’d like to say a big thank you to Allied Glass, Ardagh Glass and Friends of Glass for funding the glass recycling campaign, and the installation of the three new glass banks.