Design Context : CoP3 Up Cycling content

Up cycling

Upcycling is the process of converting old or discarded materials into something useful and often beautiful. For example:

Unraveling a wire clothes hanger to break into your car to rescue your keys = not upcycling

Stretching out a wire clothes hanger then tying strips of a plastic bag around it to make a wreath = upcycling!

Upcycling gives an item a better purpose. And while jimmying the lock on your car to is giving that hanger a new purpose, it’s not necessarily better or more beautiful. And the mangled hanger is likely destined for the trash, which is the opposite intent of upcycling.

Recycling vs. Upcycling

Recycling takes consumer materials — mostly plastic, paper, metal and glass — and breaks them down so their base materials can be remade into a new consumer product, often of lesser quality.

When you upcycle an item, you aren’t breaking down the materials. You may be refashioning it — like cutting a t-shirt into strips of yarn — but it’s still made of the same materials as when you started. Also, the upcycled item is typically better or the same quality as the original.

Upcycling Is Green

Plain and simple, upcycling makes a positive impact on the environment. When you upcycle, you remove items from the global garbage stream. Upcycling instead of recycling is good too; recycling requires energy or water to break down materials. Upcycling only requires your own creativity and elbow grease.

What Can I Upcycle?

Just about anything: Wine bottles, cans, newspapers, milk cartons, tires, suitcases, jeans, you name it. If you no longer have a use for it, upcycle it!

Upcycling is becoming increasingly popular among groups and individuals concerned about climate change. Recycling is great but it requires energy and resources to collect, sort and process unwanted items and waste.

Upcycling is an even greener way of recycling – you find a new purpose for your unwanted items before you chuck them away

Quotes form my essay that could be used

Upcycling is the process by which components of previously used items are redesigned in more treasured and refined ways

Conversely, "down-cycling" involves redesigning items to have increasingly lower-quality uses which eventually end up at the landfill and along the way still use up a large amount of resources.

This process is something that adds character and meaning to a design, the design becomes something else changing the face value of it, there is a stronger story behind the product because it has been something else

Case studies

Joolz

An example where upcycling has been implemented successfully is the Joolz pushchair packaging

Because of the nature of the product, a very large box is required as packaging; this box can then be transformed into various shapes and objects that can be used in the babies room or around the house, giving that box another use and upcycling it.

Freitag

Freitag are a company that use upcycling methods to create all there products, they use tarps, taken off old lorries and trucks, retaining the graphic patterns and typography and along the way keeping that bit of a story left behind by the trucks

This gives these bags much more of an emotional attachment to the owner making them want to keep them for longer and at the same time creating awareness for a ever advancing system of upcycling and sustainability and what can be done.