From Waste to WANT

It seems like the older we get the more we want and the more we want, the more we don’t want. The more products that we seem to grow tired of very quickly are the products that are polluting our world because of the ineffective methods we use for disposing waste.  Though recycling or “down-cycling” is a step up from how we have been doing things in the past, and a very effective method, it is still not really beneficial to feeding and giving back to the planet. My argument is not to go against down-cycling but to encourage more consumers and companies to get more involved and take action in up-cycling ideas and alternatives.

Humans have taken substances from earth’s crust and have turned them into huge quantities of material that cannot be safely put back into the earth. The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability by Ann Thorpe talks about nature’s design becoming overwhelmed by human designs and states, “All living systems are in decline. Losing their ability to recreate themselves, plant and animal populations are decreasing.” My research on pesticides from AAFA, showed that this too contribute to the decrease of plant and animal population. Pesticides are chemicals used to eliminate or control a variety of agricultural pest. These chemicals are also harmful to humans because of these chemicals being put directly onto the skin, fur, and feathers of the animals, but still the Environmental Protection Agency approve of the use of pesticides. It is recommended by the Sustainable Table, that the best way to avoid consuming pesticides in your food is to just buy organic produce meat and dairy products. With organic products, they are not as harmful to the earth as the other products are.

From the book Cradle2Cradle in chapter 4, it talks about a design called “Technical Metabolism”, it is basically a material or product that is designed to go back into the technical cycle from which it came. It talked about ways consumers could utilize what we have without digging into more harmful materials. One example was consumers paying for a time period of television watched and after the time of consumption of over, the consumer returns the TV back to the manufacture, and the lifecycle continues in this form. Another example that I enjoyed reading about from C2C was about the automobile manufacturers having their customers return their cars back to them after use of them, this way the automobile company could regain valuable industrial nutrients while developing long-lasting relationships with their customers. The advantages of the Technical Metabolism system, from C2C says “It would produce no useless and potentially dangerous waste; it would save manufacturers billions of dollars in valuable materials overtime; and because nutrients for new products are constantly circulated, it would diminish the extraction of raw materials and the manufacture of potentially disruptive materials.” To me, this is what up-cycling is all about.

For many of us creating new things are fun, but it is creating something new out of something old that we must catch onto in order to save on planet. Few retailers are now practicing the up-cycling method for sustainability. From viewing the video on apparel retailer Patagonia, I learned that they too are participating up-cycling methods within their company. Patagonia have customers return their old apparel after its use and the company then creates new apparel out of the old products, they are taking responsibility for their apparel at the end of its life. Another company that is also practicing sustainability through up-cycling is Looptworks, by turning scraps into clothes. Fast Company’s article titled, Looptworks Upcycles Textile Scraps Into Clothing talks about Looptworks Limited Edition Clothing and informing readers about how Americans throughout 11million tons of textile waste each year. The article also stated that Looptworks is, “the first clothing line to exclusively use textile waste that would otherwise end up in the garbage.” From Ecouterre article titled,  Topshop Introduces Upcycled “Reclaim to Wear” Collection for Summer it talked about the company Topshop launching its new line of apparel products made from discarded textile, the company’s goal is to create a “zero waste” design collection and they are taking steps to achieve that.

With the few companies that are getting involved with up-cycling and doing their part regarding sustainability, I can only hope to see other companies following in their footstep with this amazing method. C2C states, “To eliminate the concept of waste means to design things – products, packaging, and systems- from the very beginning on the understanding that waste does not exist.”