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Upcycling: Making the most of waste
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Lots of people know that coffee grounds make excellent fertilizer.
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But a Berlin company called Kaffeeform has gone a step further
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by using coffee grounds combined with polymers to make cups,
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plates and even designer skateboards. Such ideas are part of a
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popular trend using waste to create new products instead of
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simply throwing it away - known as upcycling. In this way an old
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oil barrel can live on as a stylish designer fridge, while old leather
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seats from luxury cars can be turned into beautiful sofas and
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chairs. A company in Britain even turned an old piano into a
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designer bookshelf costing almost 3,000 Pfund.
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But upcycled products need not be expensive. In the 1970s, students
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constructed bookshelves using wooden apple boxes. Fifty years
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later, some of them are still in use. In other words, the concept of
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upcycling is not new. Patchwork blankets are an even earlier
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example: women who had to save money used fabric from old
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clothes and material left over from sewing to make those blankets.
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Traditional upcyclers often travel to scrapyards to pick up anything
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they might need to design their products. Nowadays, upcycling is
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so popular that the National Geographic Channel has even started
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a TV series called Garbage Moguls. The series is about the work
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of a company called TerraCycle.
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In the beginning, the idea behind this firm was to resell old plastic
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bottles filled with a type of fertilizer made from organic waste.
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TerraCycle has since gone from a smalltown business to an
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international high-tech company that uses social media platforms
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to sell a whole new marketing concept based on the idea of
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“outsmarting waste”. The company provides its business partners
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with so-called Zero Waste Boxes for different kinds of rubbish. It
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takes the rubbish for free and reuses it for new products e.g.
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rucksacks made from small old drinking bags such as Capri Sun.
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It also creates other items like kites and toys made from pre-used
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plastic foil.
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Single-use products like drinking bags are made of materials such
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as metal, paper and plastic which have been put together,
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so-called composites. This is why they are nearly impossible to
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recycle. Thanks to upcycling, these long-lasting modern
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packaging materials can at least be used for another few years.
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As a bonus, the original product label, like Capri Sun, normally
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stays intact during the production. Therefore using upcycled
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products is free advertising for the brands working together with
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TerraCycle.
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However, the amount of materials that can be upcycled is just a
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drop in the ocean and, according to some critics, TerraCycle is
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acutally not as environmentally friendly as the company thinks it
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is. It has even been blamed for "greenwashing" by using green
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arguments as a marketing strategy to improve its image.
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As TerraCycle takes the composite packaging materials
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for free, business partners get rid of them and save a lot of money.
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That is why there is no motivation for the manufacturers to develop
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recyclable packaging and products in order to reduce the
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amount of waste.
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In the long run, governments and businesses will have to work out
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materials and products that are 100 per cent recyclable. Then - and
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only then - will the idea of “outsmarting waste” finally come true.
Adapted from: Read on, Eilers und Schünemann Verlag KG, Bremen (09/2018)