WordBuzz: Upcycling
Upcycling is recycling’s more creative, enterprising, and upscale cousin—a phenomenon that represents a confluence of entrepreneurship, environmentalism, and the DIY or “maker” trend.
Per Wikipedia, the term has been around since the early 1990s to describe the process of recycling used stuff into better stuff. (Downcycling, by contrast, also recycles used or wasted materials, but the resulting products do not have high commercial value.)
The concept gained popularity with the 2011 publication of craft master Danny Seo’s how-to book Upcycling: Create Beautiful Things with the Stuff You Already Have (Running Press). But the potential for entrepreneurial opportunities in upcycling are limited only by imagination, as Good magazine notes in a recent story about urban farmers growing gourmet mushrooms out of used coffee grounds.