You’d be hard-pressed to find companies proudly advertising their products as “downcyclable,” or that they support downcycling infrastructure. But plenty of them tout their activities as “upcycling.” TerraCycle, for instance, sells an “upcycled” tote made from discarded mailbags. Vissla, an apparel company, sells T-shirts made with its “upcycled textile system” composed of cotton and plastic waste. Even the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which supports reducing plastic production, sells an “upcycled” crossbody bag made from discarded plastic water bottles.
Upcycling was coined in 1994 by a German mechanical engineer named Reiner Pilz, who defined it as a system “where old products are given more value, not less.” The idea remains popular. In the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s definition of a circular economy, which relies heavily on recycling, products and materials are circulated “at their highest value,” meaning economic value. A 2019 report commissioned by the Department of Energy similarly described upcycling as the conversion of a waste material into “higher-value products,” although academic reports also describe it as increasing the “quality and lifetimes of materials and products.”
Quality and economic value, however, are subjective. They’re sometimes at odds with each other, and they can be poor proxies for environmental benefits. For instance, Repurpose Global, an organization that sells plastic credits to companies so they can say the packaging they create is “plastic neutral,” calls it upcycling when plastic trash is converted into plastic wood boards for use in construction. It’s undeniable that the boards have more economic value than a pile of dirty Snickers wrappers, but technically the final product is less pure than the plastic it was made out of. And because the boards are unlikely to be reprocessed due to the degradation of the plastic they were made of, upcycling doesn’t contribute to a cyclical system any more than downcycling does.
Budris considers the term to be an ironic admission of what his group has been arguing all along. “It’s partially acknowledging that the process is not actually recycling,” he said. “But it’s, like, attempting to upsell it.”
Dell, with The Last Beach Cleanup, said state legislators or an agency like the Federal Trade Commission should step in to more clearly differentiate cyclical recycling from linear processes — perhaps by replacing labels like “made with recycled content” to ones that say “made with downcycled content.”
Although no states have enacted legislation requiring the use of the word downcycling, several have passed laws precluding certain processes — particularly those that turn waste into fuel, like most so-called “chemical recycling” — from counting toward legally mandated recycling targets.
“If changing the name were to prevent people from thinking that the impacts of their consumption can be erased at the point of disposal, I’m all for it,” said Zink, the lead author of the 2018 research paper and an associate professor of management and sustainability at Loyola Marymount University. He added, however, that he generally thinks hand-wringing around recycling terminology is a distraction from more systemic, upstream interventions to scale back the production of unnecessary goods.
“The answer is to buy less stuff,” he said, “and that’s a very difficult to impossible proposition for companies in an open market economy.”
To Ridwell’s credit, the company is forthcoming about where it sends the plastic it collects. Partners like Trex are featured prominently on Ridwell’s website. “It’s all there for everyone to see,” Metzger said, “so consumers can make educated decisions.” He said he supports “a system where everyone has insight into how much recycling is truly happening and what material becomes.”
Still, during Grist’s tour in Seattle, Metzger acknowledged the ambiguity of recycling terminology.
“Recycling, downcycling, upcycling” — it can all be a bit confusing, he said. “We prefer to just use the word ‘circularity.’”
