upcycle!

Have you ever asked your students to upcycle- not just creating something new from discarded waste material, but creating something with a higher value?

Whether you teach elementary school students, secondary school students, or college students, you can include upcycling activities in your class to promote both design skills and an environmental ethic. In this article we will share how a teacher at one school is doing just this, providing suggestions for those who have different material processing equipment in their school labs.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Upcycle

There is a unique opportunity for technology and engineering teachers to help students understand the importance of being responsible when they purchase, design, use, and dispose of materials and products. Reducing consumption of materials and products is a logical place to begin; students can likely brainstorm a wide variety of examples where they and others can use fewer materials or make do with existing products rather than buying new ones.

One strategy for reducing the demand for new products and the materials from which they are made is to make greater use of existing products. Reuse has been defined as "using an object or material again, either for its original purpose or for a similar purpose, without significantly altering the physical form of the object or material" (California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, 2014, Reuse, para. 1). An example of this would be to refill a water bottle instead of discarding it into either a trash container or a container for recyclables.

Distinguishing between reusing and recycling may be helpful. Recycling has been defined as "using waste as material to manufacture a new product. Recycling involves altering the physical form of an object or material and making a new object from the altered material" (California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, 2014, Recycling, para. 1). An example would be to take a plastic milk jug, clean it, then grind it into small pieces, melt it, and let it cool inside a mold so it takes on the shape of a new product.

Upcycling is a type of recycling where discarded products are remanufactured into another product of higher value. In particular, "When something is recycled (or 'downcycled'), it's broken down into something of lesser quality... Upcycling...