Ethyl - The Big Blue Whale

Artists Joel Dean Stockdill and Yustina Salnikova originally built Ethyl for a commission by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. With the support of Building 180, they set up a makeshift recycling center and facilitated educational workshops around plastic waste and consumption. The artists developed a custom recycling process done by hand to demonstrate that small-scale, high impact waste management is possible and not necessarily something that has to be done on an industrial scale.

All of the plastic for this project was donated from the Monterey Bay area and qualifies as #2 type plastic, also known as HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene), which is the stiff plastic used to make milk jugs, laundry detergent and oil bottles, toys, and some plastic bags. It is also one of the most commonly used and safest plastics to work with in preventing off-gassing.The appliances used to make each panel were either handmade (shredders), donated (greywater), or found on Craigslist (oven, washing machine). All of the soap used to clean the trash was recycled from found laundry and soap bottles. In total, the artists along with dozens of volunteers hand-recycled over 5,000 pounds of plastic.

The production of the project was lead by Building 180, which included securing permits with the National Park Service, The Golden Gate National Recreation Area, hiring crew, coordinating volunteer days for the cleaning of plastic, shipping logistics, abiding ADA and signage requirements, maintaining budgets and schedules and more.

The intention of this massive artwork was to raise awareness about the problem of plastic waste –  the material used to create the whale represents one person’s plastic accumulation by the age of 20. This project also offers a design solution on how to reuse our waste. It is clear that plastic, when properly cleaned and treated, can be a valuable and nearly indestructible material. 

The Ethyl project exemplified that this simple change in perspective - waste as source material -  can ignite discourse in finding solutions to environmental degradation. 

“It’s a strange twist on our relationship with the whales,” Stockdill muses. “We [humans] used to kill them for their oil—now we’re turning oil-based plastics into a whale to try and help rid the oceans of plastic. Plastic is filling up our landfills and only nine percent of it has been recycled. As a society, we need to reduce our reliance on single-use plastic. That’s why I wanted to be a part of this effort.”

In 2019, Ethyl was awarded by the Guinness World Records as the world’s largest recycled plastic sculpture. In the same year, the art piece was acquired by Meow Wolf and transported from the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the Santa Fe Community College, where it serves as a learning tool for students in the sustainability curriculum. Given that the state of New Mexico ranks as third in the production of oil in America - oil is plastic’s main raw material - Ethyl also serves as an elixir for the community to reconcile with their relationship to the environment.