2.1.1 Individual Upcycling “People have been upcycling for as long as new objects have broken or recently gone out of fashion.” Though the term itself just got popular in recent years, it has existed for thousands of years as an individual practice of converting waste or used objects into higher value/quality objects. Szaky explains that reuse and upcycling were common practices around the world before the Industrial Revolution and are now more common in developing countries due to limited resources.” (Sung, 2015) Upcycling products at home can be as simple as reusing empty bottles and jars to re-painting old furniture. Doing it at home is more environmentally friendly than having an upcycling company do it because you avoid the environmental impacts that come with transporting waste to the upcycling company and then transporting the upcycled product back to you. The increased awareness of …show more content…
These materials are manipulated and transformed into works of art that are extraordinary. 2.1.2 Commercial Upcycling Upcycling is not limited to individual practice, it can also be brought at workplace like making use of old doors as partitions and tables. Terra Cycle, a company based in U.S., made use of upcycled materials in their entire office and was even called as the “coolest office” in the world by the New York Times. (T. Szaky, 2015) In an article entitled “Waste Not” by Jeremy Lehrer in October 2010, co-founder and director of Elvis and Kresse London, Kresse Wesling, shared how they create their products. “What I focus on are patterns in the waste. We don’t collect waste from a landfill site. We find out who’s making it, and then we get it from them. Because once you’ve allowed it to go to a landfill, the value is lost. We reverse engineer. Our design is always led by the raw materials that we fall in love with, rather than design for design
Life on the road means being completely dependent on nature. Many people travel outdoors because of the compelling beauty of nature. Travelers of the road do it for the thrill, and others for soul-seeking. Nature has a strong effect on humans, whether it’s positive or negative. For example, a travel can either end in acknowledging the beauty of nature or a fatal accident. So many famous writers and philosophers write about the value of nature; Henry David Thoreau, Jack London, Boris Pasternak, and many others. Life on the road has its advantages and disadvantages. This can be seen when Jon Krakauer wrote about Chris McCandless, a very famous traveler and an intelligent man, after his death in the book, Into the Wild. Chris McCandless was a
In recycling, raw materials that have already been obtained are used, which reduces the need for more materials to be extracted. If we recycle enough to slow the rate of extraction bringing it lower or equal to the rate that our resources replenish themselves we are living sustainable. This project is especially important because it focuses on recycling objects that take a lot of resources to make and that can't be organically broken
In Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things written by Michael Braungart and William McDonough try to recreate a new way to design and manufacture things by rethinking the basic parameters in order to establish a new, better system of manufacturing, one that will ultimately replenish and restore the earth, instead of destroying it like the one that is being used now(1). The authors state that we, as humans, should approach the concept of design and manufacture in a new way that will make the whole process of manufacture, consumption, and waste a process of that works in sync with both humans and nature, rather than damaging the nature. The authors start of by criticizing the current industrial framework as fairly primitive. It is formed over one main
A teacher once told me, “One mans trash is another mans treasure, what he doesn’t appreciate the next man will.” Until recently analyzing this statement I always pondered about it as a metaphor using the thoughts, and ideas of people, but after reading Garbology I have come up with a literal process of reusing trash. On average Americans wastes 220 million tons of waste generated each year in the United States which ends up in one of the over 3,500 landfills. According to Edward Humes, the author of Garbology, “Garbage has become one the most accurate measures of prosperity in the twenty-first-century America and the world,” which proves that trash is a means to improving the success rate of Americans. This reminds me of the words of Confucius who stated, “When a goal cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goal, adjust the action step” because with the knowledge from garbology we can
The society we live in is disposable we feel more than comfortable throwing away or removing things we use from cans, to shoes, and even plastic bottles because we feel as though it’s easier to throw them out then to fix them then reuse them. This process of renewal then reusing has been given a name; its name is “recycling”. The base word of recycle is cycle which according to Webster’s dictionary means to “a set of events or actions that happen again and again in the same order: a repeating series of events or actions.” While reading Garbology I learned the real reason why so much trash exists on our planet which is affecting our living conditions. Our planet is so “trashed” as a result undereducated people not pondering over where their trash ends up, allowing them to
The Upcycle reveals how we can truly benefit both the earth, our health, and the economy. Here are a few examples.
Recycling is not a new concept. The history of recycling goes back thousands of years. According to the Environmental Encyclopedia article “Recycling”, published in 2011:
This chart demonstrates that 44.1%, of the populace that took this study don't recognize what upcycling is. 50%, or 19 individuals, comprehend what upcycling is without a depiction, which the general population who said "no" got after this question. This serves to demonstrates that, if this was spread out to the entire populace, just above 50% of the populace would realize what upcycling is. On the off chance that individuals don't recognize what it is to upcycle then they may not know whether they like it, because of it being a standout amongst the most inventive methods for sparing the earth and to provide the positive way on economic development.
It's time to think green. To be a responsible citizen, you need to shift from the conventional consumerism method of throwing everything away and start recycling and reusing materials. You can start by cardboard recycling, which is one of the most used products, and it is also one of the most wasteful ones.
Contractors find alternative ways of transforming them into buildings that will make an impact on the public. By using their expertise, they would be able to transform these used containers into something useful and beneficial. These containers would provide them the opportunity to acquire more projects and earn profit and of course achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Through this, contractors are also able to add value to these containers that have once been unused. Extending the life of these discarded materials and providing affordable infrastructures to the people is a complete viable approach.
So scientist used both technology and science to create a sea drone, which sucks in the trash and releases clean water back in the ocean. For now these is just an experiment to see if it can really clean up the ocean. But while that is “under construction” the German sportswear Adidas is contributing by designing shoes using recycled plastic. Teaming up with Parley for the Oceans, a nonprofit organization, Adidas sets up trash collection zones around the world. The top half of the shoes are constructed with plastic found in the ocean. The rest is made using a 3D printer, using Tailored fiber placement, a technique that knits fibers together. But it doesn't stop there Adidas is trying to use this technique for other products such as their jerseys.
Recycling has been the environmental crusade to reducing the human footprint, with it’s spotlight shining down on in recent years. It was the noblest of causes, recycling being a great idea for the environment and society; but it is being handled poorly. Its modern descendant has turned into a corporate scheme with recycling becoming a business, instead of being about the environment because marketers are using environmentalism as a excuse for overconsumption, recycling products are only being recycled for profit, and cities & big business use inflated numbers to attain media attention. Let’s now take a look at the bread and butter of
Recycling During the early 1970s, as communities across the United States saw their landfills filling up, attention turned to alternative methods of garbage disposal, such as incineration and recycling. While incineration proved to be a thorny issue due to its toxic ash byproduct, recycling was embraced by Americans as an effective way to offset rising garbage production rates. Today, demand for recycled products is beginning to match supply, and the percentage of waste going into landfills and incinerators is decreasing steadily.
Recycling has been around for thousands of years, actually everyone practice some kind of it
Throwing garbage on a daily basis is a part of the human nature. Every year, one average person generates double amounts of waste than they buy and recycles about 20% of the total waste which leads the other 80% of the waste in a landfill or in the ocean, making the earth an unlivable place. All these wastes have a negative impact on the ecosystem and climate change through releasing excess greenhouse gas, thickening the atmosphere. Therefore, it’s necessary to take action on this contemporary issue while keeping the human needs in mind such as saving money or containing better quality products. According our research, to meet all these human needs while solving the issue of the climate change, upcycling is the only solution. Upcycling is a process of turning waste materials or futile products to a better quality which can be helpful to humans, increase the environmental values and at the same time, decrease the level of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, to some people, upcycling is seen as a weak concept, but it is a very effective technique which can beat the method of recycling to stop the climate change.