There's no reason to chop down a Christmas tree when you have a bounty of green materials and a lot of creativity. We love seeing inspired alternatives to holiday evergreens, so to bring an extra bit of eco-cheer to the holiday season we've rounded up some of the wackiest manmade trees built from bottles, bikes, and even shopping carts! Far out, but definitely friendlier on the earth, hit the jump for even more crazy Christmas tree concepts!
you can find more on this findHere
RECYCLED BIKE TIRE TREE
This Christmas tree in Bermondsey Square, London is made out of 35 wheels reclaimed from old bikes. It was designed by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects using wheels from a local UK bike charity called Re-Cycle.
UPCYCLED WATER BOTTLE “ICE TREE”
Featured in the storefront of Montreal’s furniture store Domison, thesculpture is made from 300 upcycled water bottles. The bottles hang from the ceiling and are illuminated to give them an ethereal quality. The installation was created by graphic design studio Paprika.
LED PROJECTOR EVERGREEN TREE
One of the most unique tree ideas we have seen, this homemade projector built by the folks at Rarebeast creates a 5ft tall image of a tree on your wall. A plastic pipe is fitted with a green LED and powered by a 9volt battery. White and red LEDs are included on the assembly and are wired to blink just like a real lit tree. So cool!
VENICE’S MURANO GLASS TREE
This stunning tree, installed several years ago in Venice, Italy, is made entirely from 1,000 tubes of Murano glass. This glass tree is 28ft tall and almost 10ft in diameter. Weighing in at 3 tons, it is the world’s largest tree made from artisan blown glass. A short video tour around the tree can be seen here.
RECYCLED CD AND CASSETTE TAPE TREE
Artist Tom Deininger created a huge tree made entirely from used CD’s, which was displayed at the Chelsea Market in NYC during the 2010 holiday. Under the tree is a bed made from tape pulled from old cassettes. This crazy manmade tree scores way high for twinkle factor! See a video of the tree here.
SHOPPING CART TREE
In a tower of glistening metal and lights, the Shopping Cart Tree is an awe inspiring alternative to the evergreen tree. This tree was built by Anthony Schmitt and can be seen in Santa Monica California. Schmitt has been building cart trees for fourteen years and says that they “symbolizes both generosity and abundance, as well as acknowledging those less fortunate where their whole world may be housed in a cart. We see shopping carts everyday and take them for granted. Individually the beauty of an everyday object may become invisible, but in quantity you can’t miss it”.
LOBSTER POT TREE
Now in its 8th year, the building of a Lobster Pot Tree has become a yearly ritual in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Artist Julian Popko and family build the tree uses these lobster cages borrowed from local lobsterman. See it all aglow in this video from the lighting ceremony!
GE’S OLED HOLIDAY TREE
The researches at GE Lighting created a tree that is only lights, using a ribbon of green-hued flexible OLEDs. How’s that for a new take on the “O Christmas Tree” carol?!
PAC MAN HOLIDAY TREE
A huge pyramid erected in downtown Madrid featured a larger-than-life Pac Man arcade game. The lit and interactive display was created with thousands of LED lights. Check out this video with a 360 view of the tree.
HEINEKEN BOTTLE TREE
The makers of Heineken created a enormous tree in Shanghai, China using 1,000 beer bottles! We hope they recycled these after the holiday!
