Upcycling or Recycling!

Ok, lets start with the obvious.
What is the difference between upcycling & recycling?

Well according to Associated Content, recycling involves chemical transformation procedures. For example, through a chemical process, old plastic bottles can be turned into a durable fabric. On the other hand, trimming down the front of a cereal box and binding it into a notebook cover requires only physical processes, and therefore by this definition would be considered upcycling.

That's seems simple enough so here is a treasury of some very crafty upcyclers!

  1. On The Bead has created Steampunk Cufflinks from watch movements
  2. Now how could I not include these 'Repurposed Envelopes' of the wonderful Where the Wild Things Are?
  3. To keep a haby theme Amalia Versaci has used vintage zipper slides to make a pair of studs.
  4. Upcycling vinyl billboard into bags & wristlets like Seen1 has done is proving very popular.

5 comments:

willywagtail said...

OK I will try to remember that because there really is a great difference there. Thanks for this tip (no pun intended). Cherrie

Penny said...

Hooray for upcycling! That's awesome!

Anonymous said...

Great point, recycling often uses too much energy, which can just generate more greenhouse gases. Some recycling can be good, but we need to reduce and reuse first:

http://selfdestructivebastards.blogspot.com/2009/09/recycling-is-self-destructive.html

Danielle said...

Great piece of information! Thanks for the education :-)

H said...

thanks so much for clearing this up, i had wondered what the difference was. I have a question though is upcycling the same as repurposed????? It's quite the conundrum