Recycling Symbol - Variants

Variants

The recycling symbol is in the public domain, and is not a trademark. The Container Corporation of America originally applied for a trademark on the design, but the application was challenged, and the corporation decided to abandon the claim. As such, any one may use or modify the recycling symbol, royalty free.

Though use of the symbol is regulated by law in some countries, countless variants of it exist worldwide. Anderson's original proposal had the arrows form a triangle standing on its tip — upside down compared with the versions most commonly seen today — but the CCA, in adopting Anderson's design, rotated it 60° to stand on its base instead.

Both Anderson's proposal and CCA's designs form a Möbius strip with one half-twist by having two of the arrows fold over each other, and one fold under, thereby canceling out one of the other folds. However, most variants of the symbol used today have all the arrows folding over themselves, producing a Möbius strip with three half-twists. Existing single half-twist variants of the logo do not generally agree on which of the arrows is the one to fold underneath. The logo is usually displayed with the arrows circulating clockwise, but the underlying Möbius strip exists in two topologically distinct mirror-image forms of opposite handedness.

The American Paper Institute originally promoted four different variants of the recycling symbol for different purposes. The plain Möbius loop, either white with an outline or solid black, was to be used to indicate that a product was recyclable. The other two variants had the Möbius loop inside a circle — either white on black or black on white — and were meant for products made of recycled materials, with the white-on-black version to be used for 100% recycled fiber, and the black-on-white version for products containing both recycled and unrecycled fiber. For example, a paper envelope might have both the first and last of these four symbols, to indicate that it was recyclable, and made from both recycled and unrecycled fibers.

In addition to the resin identification codes 1-7 in the triangular recycling symbol, Unicode lists the following recycling symbols:

• U+2672 ♲ universal recycling symbol
• U+267A ♺ recycling symbol for generic materials
• U+267B ♻ black universal recycling symbol
• U+267C ♼ recycled paper symbol (indicates product contains recycled paper)
• U+267D ♽ partially-recycled paper symbol (indicates product contains partially recycled paper)
• U+267E ♾ permanent paper sign (e.g. for acid-free paper)

An ISO/IEC working group has researched and documented some of the variations of the recycling logo currently in use, and has made recommendations for adding some more of them to the Unicode standard.