How Upcycling and Environmentalism are Turning To Shit and Creating Even More Issues

Environmentalism is starting to feel more and more like a fashion trend than an act of activism. Words like »eco-friendly« and »sustainably designed!« are overflooding the saturated pool of corporate green-washing. Scrolling through social media, one simply cannot avoid the abundance of hashtags „eco“, „recycling“ and „upcycling“. Numerous „Do It Yourself „ photos have been made to share creative ideas (or to show off) and encourage viewers to create something out of trash, usually with the (albeit, fairly good) intention to »reuse, reduce and recycle«.

But in reality, a catchy clickbait headline „5 Steps To Build Your Own Pallet Bed and Save Money“ ends up doing more harm than good. One might be so inclined to go out and buy fancy new wooden pallets instead of using old ones which have been piling up and rotting somewhere on their backyards.

And that colourful collection of pasta strainers which that Instagram influencer turned to flower pots? You’re most likely going to have to buy those because I have not met a single person with six spare sieves of the same size and shape.

Upcycling is defined by turning waste into something of a higher value. Which means instead of throwing it away or taking it to a factory to be crashed into little pieces, melted and turned into something new (also called recycling), we can upycle it to get an instagram worthy garden decoration.

Social entrepreneurs, non-governmental organisations and creative individuals around the world have been partnering up with local waste management companies to upcycle plastic bottles filled with sand or clay to build houses for people in need. (Some of) these plastic bottles are gathered or even bought from recycling companies which usually melt them down and sell the plastic. Don’t get me wrong, the idea to build a house out of trash and this way also clean our environment is an amazing one, but...

Many businesses around the world depend on plastic waste for their income as they fix roads with melted plastic and at the same time lobby against plastic bans and regulations. The problem is that most of this plastic is not really picked up from the roadsides or fished out of the ocean (all these videos that overflow our Facebook Newsfeed) but is taken from the small percentage of plastic that actually would get recycled. This kind of trendy upcycling behaviour also encourages plastic consumption and results in higher usage of plastic.

According to United Nations only around 9% of plastic gets recycled and 12% of plastic waste is incinerated and goes into the air we breathe (and contributes to global warming). The rest — well, you can bet it is not upcycled.

When we buy something and throw it away, we must stop and ask ourselves »where is away?« Everything has to go somewhere! It either ends up in landfills and pollutes our ground and drinking water or, like most of the world’s plastic, ends up in the sea, getting dispersed with currents forming the great garbage patches in our oceans, gets fragmented into microplastics and swallowed by fish (which we eat), disrupts food chains, or becomes a part of salt we consume in our food.

Using trash is a nice gesture. It can send a nice message and raise awareness about plastic pollution and the excess of trash. But when you buy new things in order to upcycle them (or get them recycled in the end anyway), you end up increasing your consumption which is more harmful in the end.

The best way to help the environment is neither to reuse, recycle nor upcycle. We simply cannot sustain the current level of natural resource depletion and waste production. We should start at the root of the problem — with reducing!

We can do small things like go out of our way to carry around our own reusable bags and food containers, and purchasing reusable glass bottles (if one has access to drinkable water). We can start by letting go of material objects and sharing our posessions such as cars and household appliances. We can do our groceries in zero-waste shops. However, even then we cannot ignore the incomprehensible expense of unpackaged goods and vegan products.

No amount of social gatherings and initiatives to clean up our beaches will help us — trash will always find its way and get washed up back to the shore.

No upcycled plastic jewellery holders and clicktivism for bracelets where 5% goes to saving trees, will help us.

No plastic bottle deposits for recycling will help us (in fact they may even increase the amount of waste we produce).

No innovative design project, trying to figure out what to do with all this trash, will help us in our overpopulated world with an expanding middle class demanding more and more ever depleting natural resources.

No fancy circular economy (at least not at this point and in this form) will help us if we do not get at the root of the problem. It is imperative that we abandon the illusion that we are somehow making a change with the initiatives mentioned above.

We must ultimately reduce our consumption and give up our convenient lifestyles by living simpler lives.

I, personally, am just striving not to be ignorant asshole in my lifetime, and trying to do as less damage as possible while I am here. For what future generations may do, I will not really be here to care.

— — —

This pessimism does not mean we should abandon efforts to recycle and upcycle entirely. There is likely a place for them in the search for a cure to our environmental ills, but only when we first start with changing our own habits.

I would also love to hear some more optimistic views and solutions.