What Is Downcycling? Why Your Recycling Bin Isn't the End

You put the milk bottle in the recycling. Job done, right? Not quite. A lot of what goes in that bin comes back as something worse than it started. That has a name. It is called downcycling.

I work with waste every day in my wee studio in Torry, Aberdeen. First it was retired climbing rope. Now it is plastic too. So here is the plain version of what downcycling is, why it matters, and what we do differently.

What is downcycling?

Downcycling is when a material gets recycled into something of lower value or lower quality than it was before. A clear bottle becomes grey filler. A strong plastic becomes a weak one. Each time round it gets a bit worse, until it cannot be used at all.

Then it goes to landfill or gets burned anyway. It just took the long way round.

Plastic is the classic case. Every time it is melted, the long chains inside it get shorter. Mix in different plastics, labels, glue and leftover food, and the result is a murky mix that is only good for low-value stuff.

Recycling, downcycling and upcycling: the difference

Recycling is the big idea: turn old stuff back into material. Sometimes it goes bottle to bottle, and that is great.

Downcycling is when it drops a level each time. Useful for a while, then gone.

Upcycling is when the waste becomes something worth more than it was. A dead climbing rope that becomes a recycled climbing rope belt. A bag of milk bottle caps that becomes a coaster you actually want on your table.

That last one is the bit I care about. Not because it sounds nice, but because a thing people love and keep is a thing that stays out of the bin for years.

Why downcycling is a problem

People want to do the right thing. But you cannot see where your plastic goes. It leaves in a lorry and that is the end of the story. Some gets sent abroad. Some gets burned. Some gets turned into low-value material. Some just gets lost.

So most folk feel like it makes no difference. I get it. I felt the same with climbing rope. Walls have to retire ropes for safety, and nearly all of it was being binned because it is hard to recycle.

What we do instead: material-first

At Forma we start with the waste and design around it. We call it material-first. We did it with rope, and it worked: repeat customers, bulk orders, wholesale, the lot.

Now we are doing it with plastic. We take clean HDPE (that is code 2, milk bottles and caps) from local businesses. We shred it, melt it and mould it into coasters, keychain parts and other bits. Same plastic, one clean type, no mystery mix. It goes up in value, not down.

You can already grab our climbing rope coasters and see the newer plastic bits in what is available now.

Stay classy and remember,
Make Waste Useful.

George