All articles tagged with #upcycling
The article offers eight practical and eco-friendly ideas for revitalizing your home using salvaged, vintage, and second-hand materials, emphasizing sustainability, character, and personal style over fast furniture trends.
Jessica Thomas McGhee shared a creative hack for repurposing empty medication bottles by cleaning and filling them with salad dressing, highlighting the benefits of reducing plastic waste and reusing containers for various practical uses, especially for people with chronic illnesses. The idea received positive feedback and inspired others to find innovative ways to reuse these bottles instead of discarding them.
An Australian company is repurposing decommissioned wind turbine blades into sustainable surfboards, addressing waste and pollution issues while promoting eco-friendly products. The project uses blades from a wind farm near Victoria to create multiple surfboards, offering a creative solution to turbine blade disposal and reducing reliance on petroleum-based materials in surfboard manufacturing.
The article explains how to convert an old TV into a smart mirror, providing a DIY guide for repurposing outdated technology into a functional smart home device.
A TikToker shares a clever hack to repurpose empty pasta sauce jars into travel coffee cups by cleaning, drilling a hole in the lid, and adding a straw, promoting eco-friendly reuse and saving money while reducing landfill waste.
The &Space Project has created a unique set of hi-fi speakers called Debris, made from recycled test fuel tanks from commercial rockets, highlighting innovative upcycling in space technology.
The Great Dale House Car, built in the 1960s by the Great Dale House Car Company, was a unique camper that used the front end of a Dodge Coronet as its base. The camper was created by upcycling wrecked cars, with the front clip and drivetrain of the Coronet being combined with a truck camper body. Around 50 to 60 of these campers were built, offering a low-slung, car-like driving experience with RV amenities. The restored 1966 Great Dale House Car, currently up for sale, features a refreshed interior, modern equipment, and a modified V8 engine.
Scientists at Virginia Tech have developed a method to upcycle polyethylene and polypropylene plastics into valuable surfactants used in soap and detergents. By heating the plastics and quickly cooling them, the long carbon chains in the plastics are broken down into short-chain polyethylene-like molecules. These molecules can then be further processed to produce fatty acids and ultimately soap. The upcycling method has the advantage of being able to work on both polyethylene and polypropylene simultaneously, eliminating the need for separate sorting. The process is cost-effective and environmentally friendly, offering a profitable alternative to traditional recycling methods.
If you want to spruce up your old light fixtures without replacing them, there are a few simple ways to do so. You can spray paint a metal fixture using paint specifically made for metal, making sure to mask off any parts you don't want to paint. Another option is to add a ceiling medallion around the wiring hole, which can be painted to match your ceiling or fixture. Swapping out the shade or globe is another easy way to update the look of your fixture without any wiring or tools required.
Polyurethane foams, which are difficult to recycle, have been successfully converted into high-performance 3D printing resins through a process of fragmentation and reconstruction. Researchers from Zhejiang University in China ground up the polyurethane foam and soaked it in dimethylformamide with a catalyst before reconstructing new polymer networks. The resulting 3D printing resins can be chemically fragmented and reused for another round of 3D printing. This upcycling process has the potential to make 3D printing more environmentally friendly and cost-effective, and it can be adapted for other types of thermoset polymers as well.
The upcycling movement is gaining ground in the US as consumers become more aware of food waste and its impact on the environment. Upcycling involves creating high-quality products from leftover food, such as using cacao pulp from chocolate production to make ice cream. The Upcycled Food Association issues an official "Upcycling Certified" seal to qualifying products, raising awareness with consumers that the company making the food used such ingredients. The movement is not confined to recycled products found in trendy stores, as a San Francisco restaurant serves pizza and wine using upcycled ingredients such as ugly mushrooms and discolored tomatoes.
Costume designers Molly Rogers and Danny Santiago upcycled Carrie Bradshaw's Vivienne Westwood wedding dress from her first wedding to Mr. Big for her Met Gala moment in the second season of And Just Like That... The dress was in "terrible shape" and had to be refurbished. The outfit also included a bespoke turquoise cape and a hidden detail - a sewing pin cushion from Smoke's creation worn by Carrie as a bracelet.
Volvo is betting on a smaller, cheaper all-electric SUV to convince budget-minded buyers to go electric. The company is aiming to capture first-time buyers with the new model, which is part of a growing trend of converting gas cars into electric vehicles. While retrofitting is becoming more common, Volvo's approach is to offer a new, affordable option for those looking to make the switch to electric.
Reflect Studio in Istanbul has collaborated with Salon Alper Derinboğaz to create new stores that explore exceptional ideas about the future of sustainability and the unique materials that can make it possible. The stores embody a fluid approach to design that experiments with upcycling, recycling, and repair culture as the future of sustainable practices. The space features innovative materials and experimental upcycling methods in AI-generated furniture, offering a new living habitat. The project seeks to create experimental composites diversified with production techniques that recycle surplus materials belonging to the production phases of textile and architectural practices.
Polymer chemists at Colorado State University, in collaboration with professors at Columbia University, have developed a new chemical strategy that uses small molecules called universal dynamic crosslinkers to transform mixed plastic waste into a new set of polymers, which can be upcycled into higher-value, re-processable materials. The crosslinkers make the mixed plastics compatible with each other through in-situ formation of a new material, called a multiblock copolymer, without deconstructing or reconstructing any of the original polymers. This new method of upcycling could help achieve the ultimate goal of reusing mixed plastic waste over multiple use cycles.