Upcycling, downcycling, recycling and design – David McCourt
Upcycling
'Upcycling' is a practice within sustainable lifestyle.
In the loosest sense of the phrase, upcycling refers to the reuse of materials or components with any given product (for example, textiles being used for soft children's toys) using the least amount of treatment or post-production (melting scrap metal/reforming materials therefore using energy) to create something of greater value or importance.
History
The term was first used by Michael Braungart and William McDonough in the international bestseller 'Cradle to Cradle – Remaking the Way We Make Things'. In the text, the authors go in to great detail of all aspects of sustainable living and working and the impact that living a sustainable life or working within a sustainable company will have in generations to come.
Recycling and Downcycling
Braungart and McDonough make it abundantly clear that upcycling is a completely different concept to recycling, whereas people who claim to recycling have been labelled “less bad” (they are trying to show they support the concept of reusing materials rather than letting them find landfill – cutting their life-cycle short).
“Recycling is an aspirin, alleviating a rather large collective hangover... over consumption” - Pg 50
Braungart and McDonough state that most recycling is actually downcycling, based on the fact that materials that are recycled (metal, plastic, paper etc) are used in a second life-cycle, but in a far greater reduced value and quality.
“When plastics other than those found in soda and water bottles are recycled, they are mixed with different plastics to produce a hybrid of lower quality, which is then molded into something amorphous and cheap, such as a park bench of a speed bump” - Pg 56
“Downcycling... can be more expensive for businesses, partly because it tries to force materials in to more lifetimes than they were originally designed for, a complicated and messy conversion and one that itself expends energy and resources” - Pg 59
Upcycling in practice
With regards to big name brands and companies, the concept of upcycling has not really come in to the mainstream and does not appear to be playing a great part in international company's plans, bar the motor company giant Ford, who Braungart and McDonough pay homage to in 'Cradle to Cradle', describing the brand's past and present plans to bring Ford in to a sustainable and eco-effective new era. Henry Ford practiced an early form of upcycling when he had Model A trucks shipped in wooden crates that actually became the vehicle's floorboards once it reached it's destination.
As for smaller, independent companies, upcycling has been growing larger and more widespread as a design function, being practiced by many. Aided by the internet, design consultancies and independent designers are now able to provide sustainable upcycled solutions to client's requests.
An excellent example of this is quirky internet company Terracycle (their brand tagline being “outsmart waste”). Terracycle have found the connection between living a sustainable lifestyle and young children, providing exciting and stimulating products for children of schooling age. By providing children with products which have been upcycled and teaching them about their properties as an upcycled object, the child will be more inclined to use upcycled products in their day to day life as they progress in to adulthood.
Limitations of upcycling
As in any design function/solution, there are downfalls to the concept of upcycling and design. Some materials, plastics in particular, release toxins as they are reused. These toxins are obviously dangerous to the consumer's health, but also to the soil and atmosphere which the plastic is in contact with.
See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannover_Principles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling
External links
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