If you clicked on this blog, then you must be curious too. Why should we choose an upcycling brand? Or, a more basic question is what is upcycling and how do these brands differ from the others?
So, let's just jump in to the article.
Have you heard about 3Rs? Reduce, reuse, recycle. Of course you have! Well, the concept of up-cycling is not too different in objective to the big three. Up-cycling is also a form of reducing waste by turning, but not limited to, non-biodegradable materials into other items or products. This may sound suspiciously similar to recycling, but you need to understand that these two are still very different. While recycling requires the extra step of breaking down the waste, upcycling skips this step and uses the material as it is. For example, recycling requires for plastic to be turned into micro-plastics to create threads. On the other hand, up-cycling will use waste material, such as an unused clothes, and create reusable face masks or tote bags.
That explanation alone should already pique your interest to up-cycling, but let’s throw in some more facts to convince you to pay more attention to this new trend.
Upcycling helps preserve natural resources. Or well, maybe a more fitting description is minimizing damage to our natural resources. How? Well, if you buy from conventional brands, meaning non-B corps brands, you have also used up the natural resources to create the item. Like how a pair of jeans and a t-shirt requires 5 gallons of water. Not to mention the additional 5000 gallons of water per 2.2 pounds of cotton produced. All these effort and environmental impact for naught when you buy the items and use it only for a couple of years before it doesn't fit you or the quality doesn't satisfy you anymore. By up-cycling these items, you can prolong their usage and lifespan, kind of making the wasteful production chain "worth it."
We haven’t even talked about the plastic that is involved too, which is also a common material for up-cycling because not all plastics can be recycled!
Yup, only 9% of total plastic waste can be recycled, and that’s because recycling materials require the destruction to be pure. Pure here refers to using only one material, meaning the plastic can't be mixed with foil as you would observe in chips packagings. Nowadays, plastics usually have the recyclable tag on them to help you understand which ones can be recycled or not. Even then, not all plastic products have this tag, which just add to the mountain of waste we already have!
So, you may be thinking, “Well, where does all the chip packaging go since they can't be recycled?" Unfortunately, their fate goes back to wasting years in landfills and polluting the air with methane release. Not to mention the threat of micro-plastic that would pollute our oceans and soil. There is the option of burning the plastic waste, but that's just turning one pollution into the other.
So, yes. We would say that up-cycling is a good choice. A better choice, even. So, if you ask yourselves: why choose up-cycling brands? Well, we hope that this blog have answered that for you. Up-cycling is extremely beneficial for the environment, which makes it beneficial for you! Remember that we can't survive without the resources that was gifted in nature.
Sustainability is about putting importance on the future generations. We need to start asking ourselves if in 10 years, will we still see clear skies? Can we still see greeneries around us? Would there still be oxygen for us to breathe? With the current projection we are going, maybe those sci-fi movies are not far from reality after all.
But, the choice goes back to you. At the end of the day, up-cycling is one of the many ways you can choose to be more sustainable. Hopefully though, you will see up-cycling in a new light and give it a shot! You should stay tuned to our blog updates to learn more about how you can upcycle.
Catch you next time!