The Benefits Of Upcycling

Upcycling basically is a wise way to minimize the disposal of waste in terms of creative and innovative by reinventing it to produce something entirely new product from the old item that is no longer needed or wanted by giving it a new lease of life with better high quality and better than new. In the short word, upcycled is a process to transform a waste to the new quality product (Neoh, 2012). The term upcycle first appeared in the mid 1990’s. According to book ‘Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things’ by William McDonough and Michael Braungart (North Point Press: 2002), they state that the goal of upcycling is to prevent wasting potentially useful materials by making use of existing ones. The purpose of practice is to preserve

Recycle is opposite to upcycle and there are difference between “recycling” and “upcycling”. People more familiar with the terms of recycling because recycling is the utilized chemical process, breaking down by extracting useful materials from one product and creating a different product means using them to make a new product. It is not a process that can be done at home for example bottle, can, glass, and paper which taking to the recycling plants to be made into reusable products by machine.

Meanwhile, upcycling just innovate uselessness of a product to a better new quality of attractive products. “Making new stuff out of old stuff” (Kari O’ Connor, 2011) Mostly upcycling is the best way to produce a new product with creativity, innovation, value and usefulness instead of recycling. While recycling is limited chemical process, upcycling is a one of brilliant human idea for example bike inner tube wallets, windows turns to wall frame and a kitchen table made from salvaged barn

That is why people start to make an upcycled project even though the items own can be used again. According to Albe Zakes, VP of Global Media at Terracycle, one of the country’s leading upcycling companies (2012) said that upcycling a juice pouch can keep 13 times more CO2 from entering the atmosphere than just recycling would. One of the biggest reasons for the rebirth of upcycling is the positive impact on the environment. It can be rescued into something useful for the items that destined to be dumped. “Upcycling goes beyond what we traditionally think of as recycling. It utilizes the residue of industry” (Sonia Bermudez,