The Virtues of Upcycling: Upgrade Your Home, Cut Down on Waste, Let Your Creativity Run Wild

The Virtues of Upcycling: Upgrade Your Home, Cut Down on Waste, Let Your Creativity Run Wild
Glass jars or tin cans are easy to jazz up into something decorative. Annie Spratt/Unsplash
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These days, upcycling seems to be on trend. On TV, particularly natty-looking hipsters demonstrate how to re-purpose ordinary household objects into beautiful, inventive items, often made for little money—and sometimes sold to “boutique shops” for a handsome sum.

In countless cafés, you’ll find up-cycled tin cans as cutlery holders and canning jars as drinking glasses. A coffee shop I used to frequent had old-fashioned sewing machine treadle bases as tables—beautiful to look at, but a killer if you cracked your shin on the mechanism below the table. I recently saw a review for a restaurant in the UK where food was served on shovels. Yes, gardening equipment! Of course, my mind immediately jumped to the scenario of the unfortunate person who snags the handle and has their entire meal catapulted across the room.

 EJ Taylor
 EJ Taylor
Author
EJ Taylor is a UK-based environmental biologist, entomologist, and teacher with over 20 years of experience in working internationally. Ms. Taylor holds a fascination for the natural world and the relationships between species. Of particular interest are the effects of the natural environment on human well-being, mental health, and cognition. When not surrounded by nature, Ms. Taylor can be found creating artwork, cooking, pottering in the vegetable garden, or traveling (sometimes on a classic British motorcycle).
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