Upcycling: A Fad or the Future?

Recycling has been used for years by companies in an attempt to reduce their negative impact on the environment. Recently, many businesses have been turning to upcycling to achieve this goal in an alternative and more impactful manner.

What is recycling?

Recycling primarily entails breaking down old items into their raw materials to create new items, such as plastic, glass, paper, etc. Recycling is an incredibly important process that people use to reduce the negative impact of new production on the environment. This is a common method of helping the environment that many people learned as kids, along with reusing and reducing their consumption of goods. Most of our waste is discarded in a landfill or incinerator, but recycling offers a different option for materials to be used again. Depending on the material being recycled, there can be a need to use new or “virgin” materials along with the recycled ones to meet quality standards for a product. For example, certain amounts of new plastic (depending on the product) are used in manufacturing along with the recycled plastic.

What is upcycling?

Similar to recycling, the process of upcycling takes previously used products and converts them into new products. However, unlike recycling, upcycling reduces, and in many cases eliminates, the need for additional energy and natural gas consumption in the supply chain. Also, upcycling strives to not use new materials to improve the finished product. Upcycled objects are of equal or greater quality and value than the…

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