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Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless and/or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value. ==Background== The first modern person to regularly upcycling was Artisan Chris Steel from The Wirral UK in 1978, he was a DJ through the mid to later part of the 1970's and also owned a reclaimed timber yard at the time so had access to a lot of material for upcycling. He now resides in the sleepy village of Prees Shropshire Uk were his studio is and continues to make many objects of interest from a vast assortment of spent materials i.e. timber, steel, iron, leather, glass.
The upcycling concept was the title of the German book written by Gunter Pauli in 1996, the free translation of upsizing (the opposite of downsizing) book first published in 1996. The German edition was adapted to the German language and culture by Johannes F. Hartkemeyer, then Director of the Volkshochschule in Osnabruck. The concept was later incorporated by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their 2002 book ''Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things''. They state that the goal of upcycling is to prevent wasting potentially useful materials by making use of existing ones. This reduces the consumption of new raw materials when creating new products. Reducing the use of new raw materials can result in a reduction of energy usage, air pollution, water pollution and even greenhouse gas emissions. Upcycling is the opposite of downcycling, which is the other half of the recycling process. Downcycling involves converting materials and products into new materials of lesser quality. Most recycling involves converting or extracting useful materials from a product and creating a different product or material. This is a significant step towards regenerative design culture where the end products are cleaner, healthier, and usually have a better value than the material inputs. For example, during the recycling process of plastics other than those used to create bottles, many different types of plastics are mixed, resulting in a hybrid. This hybrid is used in the manufacturing of plastic lumber applications. However, unlike the engineered polymer ABS which hold properties of several plastics well, recycled plastics suffer phase-separation that causes structural weakness in the final product. In developing countries, where new raw materials are often expensive, upcycling is commonly practiced, largely due to impoverished conditions. Upcycling has seen an increase in use due to its current marketability and the lowered cost of reused materials.〔Goldsmith, Belinda (2009-09-30). "(Trash or treasure? Upcycling becomes growing green trend )". Reuters. Retrieved 2009-12-02〕 Inhabitat, a blog devoted to sustainability and design, holds an annual upcycling design competition with entries coming from around the globe.〔("Inhabitat's Spring Greening Competition" ), ''Inhabitat''. Retrieved 2010-06-02〕 Upcycling has shown significant growth across the United States. For example, the number of products on Etsy or Pinterest tagged with the word "upcycled" increased from about 7,900 in January 2010 to nearly 30,000 a year later—an increase of 275%. , that number stood at 263,685, an additional increase of 879%.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Upcycle trend hits Faribault area )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「upcycling」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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