I love upcycling, I've always done it and it satisfies me to see the internet overflowing with sites dedicated to it. I love cringeing at the twee, being wowed by the truly inventive, being awed by the beauty of the art and marvelling at the staggering proliferation of upcycled stuff. But what is it, why do we do it and why is it here?
The term itself was coined about 10 years ago to describe 'the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value'. Who coined the word changes with every bit of copy you read about it so let’s just say, it wasn’t here and now it is because someone, somewhere decided it was going to be so.
Although the adjective is relatively fresh and public awareness of it even fresher the process itself is nothing new, it‘s as old as we are. It’s just that we love to label, it makes us feel secure and in control, it's part of what makes us Human and we've always done it (think Adam and genesis). We create new labels to describe existing things and we’ve reinvented what was already there (think wheel). Like most trends, the process of upcycling hasn't just arrived it's been here for time and is just swelling into public awareness now because it seems to be part of the zeitgeist of the times.
If, as a random example in time we take the 70's when I was a child and skateboards were fantabulous new fangled things and my parents couldn't afford to buy me one I was presented with a cupboard door on a pair of rollerskates that had a broken strap and ...TaDaaa. Before that my Uncle would make us 'mini-stilts' out of wood blocks and old rope. We made fishing rods out of car aerials (sorry Mr Thorley), cotton and bent pins and kept our catch in jam jars. We made musical instruments out of coconut halves, out of old bottle tops and sweetie tubes with peas in. We raided the bins for tin cans and string and made prototypes for the mobile phone.
Did we know we were inventing? Did we know we were upcycling? No, because the label hadn't been coined yet we were just doing what we've always done - making something out of nothing and making funk out of junk, then when we got bored we threw away our new fangled thing and found something else to amuse ourselves with.
We did it then because we couldn't afford the better alternative. Before that we did it because there was no alternative (think cavemen and flints). Maybe we do it now because for so long we have been credit enabled to get and have the better alternative, the better better alternative and the alternative we didn't even know we wanted yet because the only alternative to that is to be the only one in the playground, street, office or pub, with a ‘so yesterday’ whateveritis. And because now we are wondering out loud if this is really the best way of judging who we are and what we‘re worth.
Maybe we do it now because we’re coming to realise (oops) that the leaning tower of throwaway comes with a price. An environmental one, a financial one, an unworkable and unsustainable one. The impact of having all this new and newer stuff to define ourselves and our status by, is affecting the planet we live on to the point of destruction. The stress of working to buy status is affecting our quality of life to a point beyond saturation and we are sinking and drowning in our own spin on what makes us valuable and with the recession and all that jazz, it‘s right up in our faces.
Upcycling isn’t new, it’s just the latest tag in the jostle of labels that allows us to consider embracing a life away from the teetering edge of status enhancing stuff without losing style face, without admitting that we started to lose our way when we grew out of the fields into the cities and began to lose our links with sustainable living.
I’m not anti-consumerism, having new things is fab, it makes us feel good. Inventing new things causes us to marvel at how clever we are (we are clever, just too clever for our own good sometimes). Inventing and creating evolves us, it facilitates us in making leaps into the unknown future of ourselves and without this ability we would be dead as dinosaurs. Wanting something truly marvellous is all good, but somewhere around the fifites designers really started to tune into the idea of cranking up inventing and creating not as evolution, but as a process of waste making as a method of money making. The production off button got broke and our tsunami of stuff now threatens to overwhelm us and we’re really realising our mistakes (think American Indian proverb ‘money can‘t be eaten‘).
Since then the waste making moneymakers have sold us faster bigger better, more not less, faster smaller better, less is more, more of less is more and less of less is more. In the process they’ve more or less lost touch with and sight of the dry land we once lived in synch with and are drowning while pretending to wave.
In this sea of fiscal and lifestyle chaos aren’t we all looking for a way to actually wave instead of pretending to? Don’t we want with a passion a way of living that gives us less stress and more time, money, energy and satisfaction? Don’t we really want, but don’t know how, to turn back the tide.
I think this is the real reason we are embracing the idea of upcycling. It tunes us into a more satisfying and sustainable way of being and puts us in touch with a community of people who actually are waving, who always have and always are keeping calm and carrying on. People who are doing what they’ve always done which is staying in tune with the undercurrents hidden beneath the surface and riding the waves when they come. This isn't sustainable living as a fad, they’ve found a way to make money out of the waste that the wastemakers made to make money. To borrow a scriptural term they ‘live in the world but are not of it’
When we were screaming at the birth of Pop, they were untangled folk roots that have grown a whole new scene of music, art and culture. When we were wondering if CFC was a football club they were recycling, reclaiming and re-vamping their way to a multi million pound industry. They’ve shown us how to find the value in vintage and the riches in retro. They’ve shabby, eco and industrial chic’d the cast off and the cast away and in the growing tide of debris created by destructive living, without missing a beat they now reach around the circling trend hunters seeking this fabulous next best thing called upcycling and grab a handful of nothing, make it into something and sell it on to you. Ethical, sustainable, financially and environmentally viable, just the way it’s always been.
The term itself was coined about 10 years ago to describe 'the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value'. Who coined the word changes with every bit of copy you read about it so let’s just say, it wasn’t here and now it is because someone, somewhere decided it was going to be so.
Although the adjective is relatively fresh and public awareness of it even fresher the process itself is nothing new, it‘s as old as we are. It’s just that we love to label, it makes us feel secure and in control, it's part of what makes us Human and we've always done it (think Adam and genesis). We create new labels to describe existing things and we’ve reinvented what was already there (think wheel). Like most trends, the process of upcycling hasn't just arrived it's been here for time and is just swelling into public awareness now because it seems to be part of the zeitgeist of the times.
If, as a random example in time we take the 70's when I was a child and skateboards were fantabulous new fangled things and my parents couldn't afford to buy me one I was presented with a cupboard door on a pair of rollerskates that had a broken strap and ...TaDaaa. Before that my Uncle would make us 'mini-stilts' out of wood blocks and old rope. We made fishing rods out of car aerials (sorry Mr Thorley), cotton and bent pins and kept our catch in jam jars. We made musical instruments out of coconut halves, out of old bottle tops and sweetie tubes with peas in. We raided the bins for tin cans and string and made prototypes for the mobile phone.
Did we know we were inventing? Did we know we were upcycling? No, because the label hadn't been coined yet we were just doing what we've always done - making something out of nothing and making funk out of junk, then when we got bored we threw away our new fangled thing and found something else to amuse ourselves with.
We did it then because we couldn't afford the better alternative. Before that we did it because there was no alternative (think cavemen and flints). Maybe we do it now because for so long we have been credit enabled to get and have the better alternative, the better better alternative and the alternative we didn't even know we wanted yet because the only alternative to that is to be the only one in the playground, street, office or pub, with a ‘so yesterday’ whateveritis. And because now we are wondering out loud if this is really the best way of judging who we are and what we‘re worth.
Maybe we do it now because we’re coming to realise (oops) that the leaning tower of throwaway comes with a price. An environmental one, a financial one, an unworkable and unsustainable one. The impact of having all this new and newer stuff to define ourselves and our status by, is affecting the planet we live on to the point of destruction. The stress of working to buy status is affecting our quality of life to a point beyond saturation and we are sinking and drowning in our own spin on what makes us valuable and with the recession and all that jazz, it‘s right up in our faces.
Upcycling isn’t new, it’s just the latest tag in the jostle of labels that allows us to consider embracing a life away from the teetering edge of status enhancing stuff without losing style face, without admitting that we started to lose our way when we grew out of the fields into the cities and began to lose our links with sustainable living.
I’m not anti-consumerism, having new things is fab, it makes us feel good. Inventing new things causes us to marvel at how clever we are (we are clever, just too clever for our own good sometimes). Inventing and creating evolves us, it facilitates us in making leaps into the unknown future of ourselves and without this ability we would be dead as dinosaurs. Wanting something truly marvellous is all good, but somewhere around the fifites designers really started to tune into the idea of cranking up inventing and creating not as evolution, but as a process of waste making as a method of money making. The production off button got broke and our tsunami of stuff now threatens to overwhelm us and we’re really realising our mistakes (think American Indian proverb ‘money can‘t be eaten‘).
Since then the waste making moneymakers have sold us faster bigger better, more not less, faster smaller better, less is more, more of less is more and less of less is more. In the process they’ve more or less lost touch with and sight of the dry land we once lived in synch with and are drowning while pretending to wave.
In this sea of fiscal and lifestyle chaos aren’t we all looking for a way to actually wave instead of pretending to? Don’t we want with a passion a way of living that gives us less stress and more time, money, energy and satisfaction? Don’t we really want, but don’t know how, to turn back the tide.
I think this is the real reason we are embracing the idea of upcycling. It tunes us into a more satisfying and sustainable way of being and puts us in touch with a community of people who actually are waving, who always have and always are keeping calm and carrying on. People who are doing what they’ve always done which is staying in tune with the undercurrents hidden beneath the surface and riding the waves when they come. This isn't sustainable living as a fad, they’ve found a way to make money out of the waste that the wastemakers made to make money. To borrow a scriptural term they ‘live in the world but are not of it’
When we were screaming at the birth of Pop, they were untangled folk roots that have grown a whole new scene of music, art and culture. When we were wondering if CFC was a football club they were recycling, reclaiming and re-vamping their way to a multi million pound industry. They’ve shown us how to find the value in vintage and the riches in retro. They’ve shabby, eco and industrial chic’d the cast off and the cast away and in the growing tide of debris created by destructive living, without missing a beat they now reach around the circling trend hunters seeking this fabulous next best thing called upcycling and grab a handful of nothing, make it into something and sell it on to you. Ethical, sustainable, financially and environmentally viable, just the way it’s always been.
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