A globe-travelling artist has created a very green Christmas tree for residents of an East European city to enjoy.

Hove-based artist Nick Sayers’s tree-mendous creation from recycled bottles is the height in environmentally fir-endly art and has spruced up waste set for the rubbish tip.

Mr Sayers has just returned from Baku in Azerbaijan where his seven metre high Christmas tree made from recycled plastic bottles stands in a public square.


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Pepsi Azerbaijan collected 3,000 bottles for the project and a team of 20 local student volunteers helped clean the bottles, cut holes in their bases and string them together with cable ties.

The resulting hexagonal units were then joined together on the tree’s conical support structure in a process inspired by craft beading techniques.

Astar at the top of the tree was also made from larger plastic drinking water bottles.

At night, the tree is spectacularly illuminated with colour-changing rainbow spotlights.

Assisting Mr Sayers in the project was Glenndon Casey, the pair having previously worked together at Brighton and Hove’s longest running cooperative artists’ studio Red Herring Studios based in School Road in Hove.

The tree was made to celebrate the New Year, rather than Christmas, as Azerbaijan is a predominantly Muslim country.

To mark the country’s Islamic beliefs, Mr Sayers designed the tree’s hexagonal star pattern based on traditional Islamic tilings.

The crowning star has 12 lightbulbs and 31 points to mark the 31st of December which also happens to be the artist’s birthday.

The project was the brainchild of Leyla Aliyeva, first daughter of the Azerbaijani president, whose International Dialogue for Environmental Action commissioned the work.

The worldly artist has displayed his work in several different countries over the past two years including the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, the Netherlands and the United States while next year he hopes to deliver new projects in Algeria, Egypt and the United States again.

Mr Sayers said: “I was in Azerbaijan earlier in the year with several international artists with my work with estate agent signs for an international recycled art festival and then I got an email later asking me to do this project.

“I make almost all my work from recycled and repurposed material and Christmas is such a time of consumerism and using up of materials that it was good to make a statement about waste and recycling.

“I have been to three central Asian, Middle Eastern countries recently including Uzbekistan and Abu Dhabi and interesting these oilrich countries are all trying to show