The History of the Recycling Symbol

The original recycling symbol was designed by Gary Anderson. He won a logo design contest held by Bill Loyd of the Container Corporation of America in 1970.

• The three arrows represent reduce, reuse, recycle.
• The inside negative space resembles a pine tree.
• The symbol is a variant of the Möbius loop to symbolize continuity within a finite entity.
• The original idea was to create a symbol for recycled paper, so the folded arrows resemble folded newspapers.

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