Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products perceived to be of greater quality, such as artistic value or environmental value.
Upcycling is a subset of the recycling process. Recycling typically involves remaking items back into their original design. Upcycling is a process that instead adds value to a newly created product. Downcycling, however, is an opposing recycling process that degrades waste materials into new products of lower quality. Both processes of recycling help reduce landfill waste.
Applications of upcycling include art, music, fashion, food, and technology.
History Prior to the Industrial Revolution, upcycling was a common practice used to repair goods. The person repairing the goods and the person using the goods was usually the same person. Writer Alvin Toffler coined the term "prosumer" to describe the role of the producer and consumer as a single entity. In the Western world, however, the increased production capabilities that came with the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in a separation of these roles. A linear economic model emerged that encouraged used products to be thrown away and replaced by newly produced ones. This rise in consumerism resulted in a decrease of the pre-industrial upcycling practices. In the 21st century, an increased understanding of the economic and environmental benefits of upcycling has contributed to the revival of DIY repair.
History of the term "upcycling" Upsizing was the title of the German edition of a book about upcycling, first published in English in 1998 by Gunter Pauli and given the revised title of Upcycling in 1999. The German edition was adapted to the German language and culture by Johannes F. Hartkemeyer, then Director of the Volkshochschule in Osnabrück. The concept was later incorporated by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. They state that the goal of upcycling is to prevent wasting potentially useful materials by making use of existing ones. This reduces the consumption of new raw materials when creating new products. Reducing the use of new raw materials can result in a reduction of energy usage, air pollution, water pollution and even greenhouse gas emissions.
Upcycling has shown significant growth across the United States. For example, the number of products on Etsy, Pinterest, and Upcycle Studio tagged with the word "upcycled" increased from about 7,900 in January 2010 to nearly 30,000 a year later. , that number stood at 263,685.
Global context In 2009, Belinda Smith from Reuters wrote that upcycling had increased in rich countries but observed that upcycling was a necessity in poorer ones. While developing countries' practice of upcycling used goods reflects a lack of access to buy new goods, in developed countries it reflects a greater importance assigned to environmentally friendly practices. Consumers are also motivated by cheaper prices to upcycle. If more companies recognize the profitability of upcycled products, then it can become a more mainstream practice in the corporate world.
Recycling and upcycling
Recycling While recycling usually means the materials are remade into their original form, e.g., recycling plastic bottles into plastic polymers, which then produce plastic bottles through the manufacturing process, upcycling adds more value to the materials, as the name suggested. According to Watson & Wolfe "Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products perceived to be of greater quality, such as artistic value or environmental value."Recycled Art, a form of Environmental Activism Watson Life. 4 January 2021. Retrieved 11 March 2023
Similarly, recycle art may refer to art pieces using used materials in their original form while upcycle art may involve a transformation process such as breaking down, reforming, reassembling, and the like.
A common concept in Recycling is the 3Rs, which represent Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. According to The Upcycle Artist's Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Creating Art from Waste published by Upcycle Art And Craft Society (UAACS).Retrieved 11 July 2023 They coined a 3Rs principle for upcycling: Rethink, Reform, and Reborn.
"Rethink" involves reevaluating something and looking at an item from a new perspective. It means seeing the potential for repurposing, giving it a new function, or exploring other creative possibilities for that material. "Reform" involves physically altering the item, either by dismantling it, combining it with other materials, or using different techniques to change its form. This transformation of existing materials creates a new structure that better suits the artist's creative vision. "Reborn" is the final outcome when the upcycled item is given new life or purpose. It's like a resurrection of cast-offs that are given a second life"
Downcycling Downcycling is the opposite of upcycling and the other part of the recycling process. Downcycling involves converting materials and products into new materials, sometimes of lesser quality. Most recycling involves converting or extracting useful materials from a product and creating a different product or material.
The terms upcycling and downcycling were first used in print in an article in SalvoNEWS by Thornton Kay quoting Reiner Pilz and published in 1994. This article described downcycling as a process where used products are broken down and given lesser value. This contrast was used to highlight the need for upcycling, where products are given more value through the act of repurposing them. Utilizing reclaimed woodblock, a road in Nuremberg, Germany underwent downcycling, specifically "waste" recycling.Thornton Kay, Salvo in Germany - Reiner Pilz, p14 SalvoNEWS No99 11 October 1994
Material downcycling occurs when it is either not possible or uneconomic to restore materials to their original quality, for example, when wrought aluminium alloys are melted to produce lower-grade casting alloys. Material upcycling, in the thermodynamic sense, is only possible if even more energy is added to upgrade the material quality. Two guiding questions to ask when assessing recovering for waste materials or products are: How much energy is required to restore the recovered material back to the desired material or product?, and, How does this quantity compare with obtaining the desired material or product from virgin or primary sources? In some cases, little energy is required to reuse a discarded product, for example, secondhand clothing. In other cases, the energy required to recover the materials is more than the energy required to process virgin material.
Environmental impact Upcycling is a significant step towards regenerative design culture where the end products are cleaner, healthier, and usually have a better value than the material inputs. For example, during the recycling process of plastics other than those used to create bottles, many different types of plastics are mixed, resulting in a hybrid. This hybrid is used in the manufacturing of plastic lumber applications. However, unlike the engineered polymer ABS which hold properties of several plastics well, recycled plastics suffer phase-separation that causes structural weakness in the final product.
Upcycling is a strategy used in the circular economy to reduce resource consumption by improving the value of products and closing material cycling through re-use. The lifespan of products is extended through the repair and repurposing that upcycling drives. While the rising global population results in more consumption and waste, eco-friendly practices like upcycling contribute to efforts to combat this issue. Upcycling combines recycling tactics and creative innovations to avoid product degradation.
Applications
Art
Upcycle Art or sometimes known as Recycled Art or Recycl’Art is the transformation of waste or used materials and objects into art pieces.
The tradition of reusing found objects (objet trouvé) in mainstream art came of age sporadically through the 20th century, although it has long been a means of production in folk art. The Amish quilt, for example, came about through reapplication of salvaged fabric. Simon Rodia's Watts Towers (1921–1954) in Los Angeles exemplifies upcycling of scrap metal, pottery and broken glass on a grand scale; it consists of 17 structures, the tallest reaching over 30 meters into the Watts skyline.
Intellectually, upcycling bears some resemblance to the ready-made art of Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaists. Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel (1913), a front wheel and fork attached to a common stool, is among the earliest of these works, while Fountain (1917), a common urinal purchased at a hardware store, is arguably his best-known work. Pablo Picasso's Bull's Head (1942), a sculpture made from a discarded bicycle saddle and handlebars, is the Spanish painter's sly nod to the Dadaists.Gibson, Eric, "A Magical Metamorphosis of the Ordinary", The Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2011. Throughout the mid-century, the artist Joseph Cornell fabricated collages and boxed assemblage works from old books, found objects and ephemera. Robert Rauschenberg collected trash and disused objects, first in Morocco and later on the streets of New York, to incorporate into his art works.
The idea of consciously raising the inherent value of recycled objects as a political statement, however, rather than presenting recycled objects as a reflection or outcome from the means of production, is largely a late 20th-century concept. Romuald Hazoumé, an artist from the West African Bénin, was heralded in 2007 for his use of discarded plastic gasoline and fuel canisters to resemble traditional African masks at Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. Hazoumé has said of these works, "I send back to the West that which belongs to them, that is to say, the refuse of consumer society that invades us every day." Jeff Wassmann, an American artist who has lived in Australia for the past 25 years, uses items found on beaches and junk stores in his travels to create the early Modern works of a fictional German relative, Johann Dieter Wassmann (1841–1898). In Vorwarts (Go Forward) (pictured), Wassmann uses four simple objects to depict a vision of modern man on the precarious eave of the 20th century: an early optometry chart as background, a clock spring as eye, a 19th-century Chinese bone opium spoon from the Australian gold fields as nose and an upper set of dentures found on an Australian beach as mouth. Wassmann is unusual among artists in that he does not sell his work, rather they are presented as gifts; by not allowing these works to re-enter the consumer cycle, he averts the commodification of his end product.Crawford, Ashley, "Hoax Most Perfect", The Age, October 11, 2003.
Max Zorn is a Dutch tape artist who creates artwork from ordinary brown packaging tape and hangs pieces on street lamps as a new form of street art at night. By adding and subtracting layers of tape on acrylic glass with a surgical scalpel, the artwork can only be visible when light is placed behind it, mimicking the effects similar to stained glass window methods. His technique with pioneering upcycling with street art has been featured at Frei-Cycle 2013, the first design fair for recycling and upcycling in Freiburg, Germany.
Music A prominent example is the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura in Paraguay. The instruments of the orchestra are made from materials taken from the landfill of Asunción, whose name comes from the Cateura lagoon in the area. A limited part of its real history is narrated in the film Landfill Harmonic.
Industry