Leaders of the G7 countries visiting Cornwall for this week’s summit have been immortalised in a sculpture of recycled electronic waste.
Dubbed ‘Mount Recyclemore’, the piece is based on Mount Rushmore in the US, but instead depicts the seven politicians including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The sculpture, made from old mobile phones, computers and even vacuum cleaners, aims to highlight the huge environmental threat of electronic waste as leaders prepare to discuss how to tackle climate change and build a greener future.
One of the main artists, Joe Rush, who was commissioned to make the work said he hoped it would shine a light on the need to deal with harmful ‘e-waste’.
“We have to deal with it, as a human race we have to deal with it, not as nations,” Rush said.
“Let’s try and build things that we can repair, let’s build things that last longer, let’s not have the newest thing every time, let’s find a way to deal with this before we just get buried under it,” Rush said.
Steve Oliver, 50, the co-founder and group CEO of musicMagpie, said he hoped the artwork would raise awareness toward the global problem e-waste problem.
“It’s 53 million tonnes of e-waste that is created every year, of which the G-7 contributes about 40% of that currently,” he said.
Rupert Manley, 60, a retired GP and a member of a climate action group based in nearby St Ives, said he hoped the G-7 summit would be a “turning point in our approach to environmental problems, to humanity”.
