You may be familiar with eco-trends like reforming, DIY, and recycling. However, have you heard of bag made of useless airbags? In addition, what about a vintage cafe that was an old closed factory with a conveyor belts in it? Like these examples, we can call these things ‘Up-cycling’, which is a recycling with an application of design and high quality materials. Let’s find out more details. -Ed.

What is Up-cycling?
  Up-cycling is a high quality recycling that creates more value with designs and ideas. For example, recycling is making new papers from useless papers. On the other hand, up-cycling needs a creative idea like making a wallet from papers. Today, up-cycling is very trendy among people because of its new and fresh ideas and designs.

Infinite products of Up-cycling
  In Hannam-dong, Seoul, there is a flagship store named ‘Series; corner’. It gathers people’s attention because they sell some up-cycling products such as a bag made of a fire hose or a necklace and earrings made of an old watch’s parts. In the shop, there is an up-cycling brand called ‘RE;CODE’. This brand’s clothes are made by disassembling unsold previous fashions and redesigning with their patchwork. Therefore, the designs are very unique, and the quantity of clothes is also very limited. An interesting thing about this brand is that they attach a tag written with a sentence, ‘only 4 of these garments exist’.
  In Gangwon-do, there is a famous tourist attraction, Nami Island. In the island, there is a green eco shop which sells up-cycling products like clocks and ornaments made of glass, and also people can experience making up-cycling products, such as hair braids, card wallets, bags and necklaces. Therefore, many tourists including foreigners can make their own up-cycling products. It is one of the famous sightseeing places in Nami Island.   
  Furthermore, there is a famous up-cycling bag. It’s ‘Freitag’. It is a Swiss bag made of used truck waterproof fabrics and safety belts. Its bags are the same size, but its colors and designs are not the same because they are made of so many different waterproof fabrics.
  Recently, up-cycling expanded its territory into architecture. For example, in Hapjeong-dong, Seoul, there is a famous vintage cafe ‘Anthracite’. The building was an old shoe factory. The cafe kept its old factory structure and remodeled it very creatively. They used old conveyor belts for tables, and the steel structures on the ceiling made the cafe more vintage. In conclusion, we can up-cycle anything from earrings to buildings.

Moral consumption: Up-cycling
  Up-cycling is a development from the reforming trend. Nowadays, there are many up-cycling industries that make an effort to create the moral consumption by reusing things. Kim Jun-mi, an assistant in Nami Island’s green eco shop, said, “Don’t waste things, even if it is useless. Think again to create the things into new and fresh items. I believe this mindset should be accepted by all people. These days, people prefer new to old. We should change our mindsets so as not to ignore the used things.” Up-cycling industries have introduced consumers to up-cycling and moral consumption of their products. Therefore, the beneficial development of up-cycling industries is up to the consumers and companies.

 

By Park Ji-su
js34@cbnu.ac.kr