“Upcycling” is the kind trash talk we should be having in our social conversations, not the language of vulgarity, hate and prejudice. The message is: don’t waste your trash or throwaway, give it a new purpose, create an inventive use for the same old material to make it cool and stylish like never before.
In case you haven’t noticed, according to one survey a majority of younger generations (59 percent of Generation Z and 57 percent of Millennials) are buying upcycled products. Business of Fashion, the leading digital authority on the global fashion industry, states that Gen-Z has “helped popularize upcycling and reselling used clothes, due to become a $51 billion business by 2025.”
This development is very heartening, something that our climate-challenged world should welcome with open arms.
Upcycling? I think I’ve been there, done it and still doing it.
In my boyhood days, my playfellows and I ingeniously converted empty sardine cans into “cars” using soft drink “tansans” (bottle caps) as wheels. Inept as I was, I even managed to stringtogether a “train car” out of those sardine cans. To have the best-crafted sardine car in our neighborhood was a bragging right. The esteem of our friends was highly prized.
Aside from empty sardine cans, we also collected discarded rubber sandals, which we ingeniously turned into make-believe sailboats and floated down the flowing waters of canals and esteros.
In our street parties, we danced to the music of an amateur band, we called them “combos” then, which used an empty gasoline drum (salvaged from US liberation army) with wires or strings, as their base instrument.
In hindsight, those were my earliest encounters with upcycling, albeit in its most primitive form.
So what exactly is upcycling and what’s good about it?
Remember “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle?” As someone puts it, if reducing, re-using and recycling are siblings, then think of upcycling as their newly arrived, better-looking cousin.
To recycle something is to break the item back down to its raw state, then restore it and reuse it for the same purpose.
With upcycling, you don’t take back the discarded item to its original state. The “old” throwaway material, with some modification, gets turned into a “new” product. It is the same product but creatively re-purposed for another use. Thus, cast-off fabric scraps are collected and turned to rag rugs or cloth wipes. Old newspapers and old bottles are not destroyed. They are polished, redesigned, and given added value as stylish bags or attractive decorative or gift items.
Isn’t that reusing? Yes, but the difference is it’s an upgrade! Its value is increased.
Upcycling is a winning scenario. We help our oceans and waterways get rid of human-made trash. It helps reduce the space in landfills that would otherwise be taken up by our trash. Profitable enterprises that make upcycled products help provide steady income for the jobless and the disadvantaged they employ. Our cities can now hope for a more climate sustainable future.
Let me share my personal thoughts on upcycling. As I said, we need to make it the new conversation of our social media. Beyond that, we need to develop an upcycling mindset.
Having an upcycling mindset stirs up endless creativity and requires a DIY (do it yourself) attitude. Think of the world as one giant upcycling factory. As someone said: “All the trash around us and within us is here for us to upcycle creatively into usable products.” What discarded item can I upcycle today is an exciting reason to get up every morning.
It is also a good approach to personal living. It goads us to throw away our disposable mentality and to make things by ourselves instead of just being consumers.
Even now, I always look for ways to make new uses for disposed stuff. When my granddaughter needed to come up with a miniature diorama for her class, we utilized the box cartons I had been hoarding to cut out dinosaur figures, painted them in bright colors and placed them on flattened cardboards. Her work was highly praised by her teacher!
Which leads me to say that in schools, we should encourage students to design and create upcycled products using materials collected at home and school such as empty plastic cups, T-shirts, old toys, newsprint, magazines, and paper and plastic bags and so on.
An upcycling mindset expands one’s spiritual perspective. In my previous article I talked about having a sense of gratitude towards things that serve us well. Upcycling is a way of practicing respect for things. It’s like rescuing an object from final oblivion and giving it a new lease on life, or a second opportunity to be of service. Or as someone puts it, a new soul.
For instance, those old newspapers and stacks of scratch paper beside you could live a new life as expressive medium for creative artworks made out of paper, such as paper tole art or paper collage painting.
They can still touch us at another point of our lives. An upcycled seat or ironing board could be a conversation piece that leads to deeper talks on nature, art, and history.
More significantly, an upcycling mindset serves as an ongoing invitation or a gentle reminder to upcycle and repurpose yourself. After all your old self is past its expiry date. How do you infuse it with some meaningful value without completely discarding the story of its past?
Let’s leave that question for you to find out for yourself. This conversation is far from over.