Recycling Taken to Another Level

Welcome my earthy people! Ways to recycle is one of my favorite topics to talk about! There are a lot of ways I found that people are trying to recycle on the Earth; the main reason for this is because we all have SO MUCH STUFF, but it does not seem to be going anywhere, except maybe the landfills. With that in mind, I first would like to talk about upcycling. For clarification, I looked up what upcycling means for you wonderful people! I visited UpcycleThat.com for some clarification and UpcycleThat.com states upcycling is “taking something that’s considered waste and repurposing it. The upcycled item often becomes more functional or beautiful than what it previously was. That’s why it’s called upcycling, because the value of the item is increased!”

An example of this would be local artists, and how they take materials that they find on the Earth to help with the reduction. When trying to think of a company, I was at first at a loss. Who would be considered a local artist doing this; however, I remembered that I came across this company in Kenya, Africa which takes loose, old flip flops and turns them into art. I know that this might sound crazy but after looking at the artwork they have made, I actually wanted to get some of that artwork. The company is called Ocean Sole Africa, and they are now starting to sell some of their artwork in the United States!!!

Another example of trying to repurpose and upcycle, is how people nowadays are starting to find beach glass (broken pieces of glass found on beaches) and turn the glass into jewelry or artwork. When I heard about this, I thought this was a really cool idea. And even seeing the artwork that people make with the beach glass is wickedly insane! Thinking of a good company that I might like to share with you all is Sea Candy Jewelry, it is worth the view! Besides art and jewelry, a company in Columbus, Ohio called Bearded Woodcraft, makes wooden phone cases. The reason I think of wooden phone cases is because I never really thought about what my phone case is made of, it was not something that really occurred to me. However, lately, as I have been blogging, I began to think of all the materials that are reusable and realized how most of our phone cases are plastic, which as most of you know is a material that is bad for Our Mother. So, with the Bearded Woodcraft phone cases, they are made out of eco-friendly products, and people are starting to become interested in these items because companies are upcycling items. When you think of recycling as well you might turn and think about paper, or glass bottles, thinking of ways they get recycled. Well my fellow friends, they get recycled and actually upcycled nowadays. There are creative people in the world who come up with new ways and things to do with these objects such as turning wine bottles into cheese platters, or old books into art!! I know this might sound crazy, but people are actually so talented!!! And are finding creative ways to recycle things and make them look brand new!

In addition to upcycling, there are also people who take used clothes to turn the clothes into rags. Now I know what you are thinking, that this sounds so silly, why would anyone want to take our old clothes and turn them into rags? However, when you step back and think more about it, how else would we actually get rags? Besides rags there are also companies that are starting to collect old fleeces and jeans to make new ones. This might sound like it is not a real thing, and for a quick minute I did not believe it myself, but actually on the Patagonia website they talk about how they take old Patagonia fleeces, to make new Patagonia jackets and coats. Madewell uses the same concept with jeans of any brand. Their own brand, AG, J. Crew, J. Brand, you name it, they will take the jean material and use it to make new jeans. Concepts like these are helping to recycle fabrics to make new clothing! When I stepped back, I thought that this was an amazing concept. Now I know what you are thinking. Is the clothing that I am buying nowadays made out of recycled clothing? Well to be honest I am not 100% sure, but it could honestly be!

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