Recycling calls for innovation. When recyclers and collectors come up with new ideas for a product that has already met its end-cycle, the green business calls it “upcycling”. It’s taking a product, disassembling the parts and putting it back together to make something new.

I just read a recent article in Waste and Recycling News, written by Kerri Jansen, that touches on this idea of upcycling.

Check out this pet cat happily laying in an iMac from the early 2000s.  ”Miles and Aimee Harrison of Siletz, Ore., craft pet beds out of used Macintosh computers. The couple sells the pet beds, along with refurbished vintage items and a variety of other upcycled products, through their store Atomic Attic on Etsy, a website for handmade and vintage items.”  Jansen states.

This is not the first item or starter business that has taken old recyclable electrical components and sold them as something new. TerraCycle is an actual company that diverts trash from the landfill and upholds its duty to “outsmart waste”.  The idea here, send in your trash now and we’ll turn it into a product you can use a lifetime, is one that will be noticed in generations to come.