Upcycling—adding design to recycled goods
Upcycling or adding artistic value to goods or space that have passed their life span,
has been recently drawing much attention as a new culture.
If recycling means reusing used goods for the same purpose again,
upcycling means changing their use and adding design to create new products.
Let us find out about upcycling for the coexistence of human beings and nature,
given that everything is easily consumed these days.
Upcycling products for greater usefulness and value
The concept of upcycling largely spread from “Freitag,” a designer brand based in Zurich,
Switzerland, that produces goods made of recycled materials.
Freitag uses truck tarps or rubber tubes of bicycles thrown out
while scrapping trucks and bicycles to make bags, wallets,
and other diverse products sold worldwide.
In Korea, “Morethan” is achieving good things as a socially responsible company
that makes products with waste materials from scrapped automobiles.
Scrap leather amounts to 4 million tons a year in the world. As such,
Morethan makes premium natural leather sheets that do not change
even under high heat and humidity and reuses seat belts
that do not easily break to make fashionable bags for the brand Continew,
which is gaining favorable consumer response.
Consumers have started to take an interest in Morethan’s philosophy of contributing
to conserving the environment by reducing waste materials from automobiles.
Furthermore, major government officials have recently highlighted
it as a responsible company that it has drawn much attention.
