Upcycling

Upcycling is a sustainable way of dealing with our waste. This allows you to give materials a second life and reduce your ecological footprint.

There are three types of waste recycling

1. In Recycling, waste products are reprocessed into raw materials. For example, new paper is made from old paper.

2. You also have Downcycling. This means that waste is reused but gets a lower value, for example if it is used as a filler.

3. Transforming waste material into new products of better quality is called Upcycling. These new products have a higher value than the original.

You can schematically depict it like this:

Reuse of car tires

ad 1. You cannot make a new tire from an old car tire, because if the rubber is hard you cannot liquefy it again. It is not the case, for example, that you can melt an old tire into a new tire. So the recycling of car tires is not possible.

ad 2. Downcycling is possible. Discarded car tires are used, for example, in the production of asphalt. The British road authority Highway England is testing a new type of asphalt on a motorway in England that contains used car tires. About 750 tires are used per km of highway.

ad 3. And Upcycling car tires …. Ecowings is good at that! Ecowings uses the inner tubes of trucks and turns them into beautiful laptop bags and accessories. A discarded tube, which no longer has any value, is transformed into a luxurious and durable bag that has a new long life for itself. Isn’t it fantastic that that piece of old rubber can be transformed into a sustainable laptopbag!?