South Jersey’s 20-foot recycled trash troll deserves respect, mayor says

New York has the Statue of Liberty. Paris has the Eiffel Tower. And in Hainesport Township, N.J., there’s Big Rusty, the 20-foot troll made of recycled trash.

But Big Rusty — created by Copenhagen-based art activist Thomas Dambo — hasn’t been getting the respect she deserves from everyone, New Jersey State Police said this week, announcing in a Facebook post that the sculpture was vandalized with graffiti last month.

And it wasn’t the first time the gargantuan troll has been defaced since she landed on the banks of the Rancocas Creek in late June. Shortly after she was unveiled, Rusty and an adjacent building were also subjected to graffiti, according to a July letter to the community.

“It’s not cool to vandalize Big Rusty,” said Hainesport Mayor Gerry Clauss. “I think that’s the point coming through. We’re watching it, and you’re going to get caught.”

Clauss said this week that there are new “security measures” around the sculpture, declining to specify further, and the township is looking into installing additional lighting in the area.

But despite the handful of mischief-makers, the public’s reception to the Burlington County recycled trash troll has been “very positive,” Clauss said, attracting social media oglers and curious hikers alike.

“It’s very rare, and it’s such a great opportunity for Hainesport to have this structure,” Clauss said. “And people are starting to realize, in fact, how lucky we are to have it. At the beginning, I think people [wondered], ‘What is this Big Rusty?’ But as they see it, they tell more and more people, more people come, and it’s actually multiplying the desire to see it.”

» READ MORE: There’s now a giant troll made of trash in South Jersey

Big Rusty was the first of Dambo’s 10 planned large-scale permanent troll sculptures across the United States, part of a series dedicated to showcasing the beauty and value in recycled trash — or as Dambo sees it, “treasure.” (Embarking on a cross-country summer road trip, the artist planned other trolls in states including Michigan, Vermont, Colorado, and Washington state.)

The area in Hainesport — once the home of Creek Turn Ceramic Co. — was proposed as a site for Dambo’s work by a township resident, said Clauss. Parts of the abandoned pottery studio, including bricks and scraps from the roof, were used to create Big Rusty. And some of the preexisting graffiti on the studio building — sans explicit language and imagery — is being preserved, Clauss said.

“I hope that they will see that we can make something of what is just considered worthless or discarded,” Dambo previously told The Inquirer. “I hope people will see the size of my sculptures and will ultimately just be a marketing campaign for changing how we recycle trash.”

The township hopes to turn the area surrounding the troll — off Route 38 near the South Branch Rancocas Creek — into a 24-acre park featuring a kayak launch, Clauss said.

And while Hainesport’s newest mammoth resident has cast a similarly sized spotlight on the township of 6,300, the mayor said he welcomes the positive attention that Big Rusty brings.

“We’re truly an awesome town to have something like this.”