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RECYCLING - UPCYCLING
V. Ryan © 2014
 
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Upcycling is a type of recycling. When a product comes to the end of its life cycle, it is dismantled and its components / parts are reused to produce high quality products, often a higher quality than the original product. For example, reclaimed plastic drainage tubing can be reworked to produce ‘funky’ storage units (see below). Upcycling a component, means that it is upgraded into a higher quality product, adding value.
 
 
 
Usually when recycling a product and its parts, the quality of the recycled products or materials is lower than when first used. This is sometimes referred to as ‘downcycling’. For example, recycling metals usually involves melting down reclaimed metals, so that they can be used again. Remelting metals often results in lower quality metals. For this reason, scrap metals are usually added to new molten metal. This happens in most steel mills.
 
 
 
 
Upcycling is environmentally friendly, as it means that whole products or dismantled products, are not ‘dumped’ in landfill sites and that reclaimed components and materials can be continually reused, producing high quality products.

Normal recycling, often means components and materials are reused producing lower quality products, until they can be reused no more, and eventually end up in landfill sites.
 
Another example of upcycling is seen with the use of glass bottles. Instead of recycling the glass, which requires high levels of energy, the coloured translucent bottles have been formed into window for a wall. The wall is like stained glass, creating coloured light for the interior of a house / flat.
 
 
JEFF AND PERSONAL UPCYCLING
 
Jeff he’s a hardman, is so impressed with the notion of upcycling, that he has tried his best to wear upcycled clothes and personal effects, from recycled products. He has travelled up and down the country, leaving no stone unturned, on a mission to establish upcycling as a modern day philosophy.
 
 What do you think?
 
 
 
 
 
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