Wasteland Art Installation: Turning Marine Debris Into a Sustainability Story | ReCo

The brief: environmental awareness

• Create a public experience striking enough that people would stop, look up and want to know more

• Turn an environmental issue into a story people wanted to share, not one they felt lectured by

• Build a piece of content and PR that could travel far beyond the physical installation

01 The idea: from a question to a concept

Every good story starts with a question worth asking. Ours was: what if marine debris could be transformed into something meaningful, beautiful and impossible to ignore?

We’d seen an experimental conservation project in Costa Rica and couldn’t stop thinking about it. Not the technical side, the feeling of it. The way turning waste into art changes how people relate to a problem they usually scroll past.

We spent time in research, sketching, and prototyping to shape that feeling into something concrete, then pitched it to the City of Sydney’s Art & About program. The strength of the idea and the story we could tell around it was what got Wasteland funded.

02 Building the story with the right collaborators

An idea this size needed more than one team. We brought together designers, manufacturers, riggers, and a marine debris collection partner, Eco Barge Clean Seas, each chosen not only for their craft but also for how well their work would translate into a story worth telling.

Every decision, from the warm orange of the spheres to how they’d hang in the light, was made with the audience’s experience front of mind. This wasn’t just production. It was set design for a story; we wanted a city to walk through.

03 A moment 24 metres in the air

Getting Wasteland into Customs House was its own feat of coordination: careful rigging, tight timelines, and a genuine question of whether it would land the way we’d imagined.

It did. Suspended 24 metres above the atrium floor, the installation became the kind of moment people paused for, photographed and talked about on the way out, exactly the reaction a piece of content marketing dreams of, built in physical space.

04 Telling the story: content and digital engagement

The installation was only half the campaign. The other half was making sure the story reached people who’d never set foot in Customs House.

We built a digital storytelling campaign around Wasteland photography, video and social content designed to carry the feeling of standing under it to anyone scrolling past. A short video produced with the City of Sydney reached nearly 40,000 views in its first week alone.

Coverage in outlets like The Design Files added momentum, and between the on-site crowd, the video and earned media, Wasteland reached an estimated online audience of 100,000 people. It became a shared conversation about waste, about design, about what’s possible, carried by the city’s own marketing team and our Instagram community as much as by us.

05 Why the story outlasted the installation

Wasteland came down eventually. The story didn’t. It gave our design and manufacturing collaborators a real, proven case for exploring commercial applications of marine debris, and it gave ReCo a live example of something we believe deeply: that a well-told story is the fastest way to make people care about a problem they’d normally look away from.

Project impact

• First public installation in Sydney to pair recycled marine debris with commercial-scale production

• Engaged 50,000+ in-person visitors and reached 100,000+ people online through digital content

• A short-form video that hit nearly 40,000 views in its first week

• National and industry media coverage, including The Design Files

• Opened the door for design and manufacturing collaborators to explore marine debris commercially

Key takeaways for culture, arts & creative organisation marketing

1. A strong story is the difference between an installation people see and one they talk about

2. Public art can carry a message further and more warmly than a straightforward campaign ever could

3.  The best content doesn’t explain the issue; it makes people feel curious enough to ask about it themselves

4. Visual storytelling bridges the gap between policy, business, and public engagement

5. Government grants can unlock high-impact creative work that a brand budget alone rarely would

Wasteland: FAQs

How do you turn a sustainability idea into something people want to share?

You lead with a feeling, not a statistic. Wasteland never opened with numbers about ocean plastic; it opened with 2,255 glowing spheres suspended above people’s heads and let curiosity do the rest. Once someone’s genuinely drawn in, they’ll ask the harder questions on their own, and the answers land far better than if you’d led with them. That’s the difference between content people scroll past and content they stop for.

What makes public art work as a content marketing asset?

Scale, and a story built for more than one audience. Wasteland was designed to hit differently depending on who encountered it, whether that was someone walking through Customs House, watching a 30-second video, or reading a feature in The Design Files. Building the digital campaign alongside the physical installation, not after it, is what let the story travel to an audience 20 times larger than the people who ever saw it in person.

How do you get media coverage for a one-off project?

You give journalists a genuinely good story, not a press release. Wasteland’s coverage came from the strength of the concept and the visuals, not from a pitch built around sustainability messaging. The most shareable projects give media outlets something visually striking to run with the message, which follows naturally once people are already looking.

Is it worth applying for government or council funding for a creative project like this?

Yes, if the idea is strong enough to be worth telling twice. Wasteland was only possible because we secured funding through the City of Sydney’s Art & About program, and that support did more than cover costs. It gave the project institutional backing that made media outlets, collaborators, and audiences take it more seriously. A well-pitched grant application can unlock a scale of creative work a standalone brand budget rarely stretches to.

How do you measure the ROI of a public art brand experience project?

Look past the installation and count the story’s full reach. Wasteland’s real return wasn’t just the 50,000-plus people who walked through Customs House; it was the 100,000-plus who encountered the story online, the coverage it earned, and the commercial conversations it opened up for our collaborators afterwards. A physical experience is often just the spark; the content built around it is what carries the value further and for longer.