PROOF COFFEE PODS CAN REALLY SWELL IN NUMBER
BRISBANE artist Jaco Roeloffs has taken his love of coffee to the next level by creating a sculpture for the Coast’s SWELL festival.
The piece, named Superegg, is made of 3000 Nespresso coffee pods and weighs more than 500kg.
Roeloffs put a call out on Facebook for used Nespresso pods and received an overwhelming response, with some coming from overseas.
More than 3000 pods were donated for the cause with some even being used in Roeloffs’ son’s classroom art.
Roeloffs said he was inspired when he went away for Christmas last year and noticed some coffee pods couldn’t be recycled.
“I looked it up and found out it (the pods) goes to landfill and it’s not dealt with properly,” he said. “I did some research and found out Nespresso makes sure it’s dealt with properly.”
Superegg is thoughtprovoking and delivers a big message for the community through the use of pods.
“It illustrates how quickly they multiply if we don’t do something,” Roeloffs said.
Roeloffs said there was quite a process involved in building the structure.
He calculated he had spent about 200 hours cleaning all of the pods and another three weeks building the sculpture.
Colours are arranged randomly with the only organised part of the sculpture being the straight lines.
When coming up with the concept for Superegg, Roeloffs said he wanted to make sure the campaign was positive after finding out some companies put in a big effort to recycle.
“Some environmental stuff can be negative,” he said.
Roeloffs said he wanted to encourage people to recycle.
On his work, the artist said he liked to “make things that make you think about the future”.
Nespresso is a supporter of the piece, which reflects its own environmental and recycling efforts.
SWELL runs along the Currumbin beachfront until September 22.