Recycling or Upcycling

Reader Contribution by Laura Berlage and North Star Homestead Farms
Published on March 21, 2017

Upcycled sweater “dress” Kara helped me make from thrift store finds.  Photo by Steve Barnes.

I grew up learning the mantra of “reduce, reuse, recycle” for making an environmental impact in the home.  We carefully cleaned and sorted glass, aluminum, plastics of certain numbers, and saved up paper and cardboard so it could magically have a new life beyond our home.  As a kid, we still had to take the labels off all the jars too!  It’s certainly much simpler to recycle most consumer products today…except Styrofoam, no one seems to know how to reuse that one yet.

Because of products like Styrofoam (which will still be kicking around millennia from now), another item was added to the mantra—refuse.  Not only could you reduce your waste, reuse items more than once, and recycle others, but you could purposefully “refuse” to purchase items that couldn’t be reused or recycled. 

At Farmstead, all our takeout containers are either made from pressed sugarcane pulp (which easily composts) or post-consumer recycled plastic (which can be recycled again), which means no Styrofoam.  We simply refuse to buy it and stock it.  The more people who refuse to buy environmentally non-friendly products, the less market demand that product will have, and eventually companies will respond by producing less of it.  Why make it if people won’t buy it!

Upcycling Trend

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