[10. Sustainable
It is environmentally friendly packaging. Packaging is sustainable if designed in a holistic way, fully balanced with the product and its ways of use, so as to optimize the overall environmental performance.
From Asia to Latin America, upcycling projects to promote sustainability with a triple impact: environmental, economic and social
Upcycling, also known as “creative reuse”, is a process that transforms waste objects and considered no longer useful, into new products perceived to be of higher quality than the original materials, and to which a particular aesthetic and environmental value is attributed as well as new meanings. And packaging is one of the objects which, once its useful life is over, lends itself most to this “resignification” operation.
Upcycling stands in opposition to downcycling, which is the most common practice of the recycling process, which implies the conversion into new materials, most often of lower quality than the starting ones. When it is not possible to repair or reuse an object, and recycling is not possible or not convenient, upcycling can be a solution to prevent waste from ending up in landfills and polluting the environment.
First introduced in the 1990s, the concept of upcycling was revived and popularized at the turn of the century by McDonough and Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, widely recognized as a seminal text. of the sustainability movement.
Since the end of the first decade of the 2000s, upcycling has begun to spread significantly in the so-called developed countries, especially in the fashion and packaging sectors, to then become a real trend over the years.
It is true, however, that while in the global North upcycling has become a mainstream phenomenon with respect to the market for “eco-compatible” products, in the developing countries of the South of the world this practice has always been used for the recovery of materials of waste, more out of necessity than for environmental protection, above all due to the lack of resources and the scarcity of raw materials.
Among the spontaneous reuse experiences of the global South, there are some that have also had a significant impact on a social level, thanks to initiatives born in the local area with educational and humanitarian aims. Two particularly relevant examples in this sense are the “Orquesta de Reciclados de Cateura“ and the “Liter of Light“ movement.
Cateura is a suburb on the outskirts of Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, and stands on land that over time has become the city’s landfill, the largest in the country. The piles of rubbish extend for kilometers and the approximately twenty-five thousand families who live there, forming a sort of slum, survive by collecting and selling plastic bottles or anything they can find among the waste.
Particularly worrying are the living conditions of the inhabitants of the area, especially the children, who are often left alone while their parents, the “gancheros” (so called because of the hooks they use to rummage through the garbage), are busy looking for in the landfill.
About ten years ago, the Paraguayan musician and environmental technician Favio Chávez decided to put together an orchestra for local children, to give them the opportunity to express their creativity, using music as an educational tool and a possible social redemption.
The “Orquesta de Reciclados de Cateura“ (literally “Cateura Recycled Orchestra”), on which a documentary was also made, it is made up of fully functional musical instruments made with waste from the Asunción landfill. The orchestra’s repertoire ranges from classical music to the Beatles.
Another example of upcycling with a strong social impact is “Liter of Light”, a global movement with a network of collaborations all over the world, committed to providing daylighting to homes without electricity or with low energy availability in marginalized communities, thanks to particular “ sun bottles”.
These devices consist of transparent plastic bottles filled with water, to which a little bleach is added to inhibit the growth of algae, and which are inserted into holes made in the roofs of the houses to be illuminated. Thanks to the refraction of external sunlight, it is possible to supply an amount of light equal to that of a 40-60 watt incandescent bulb.
The idea of using plastic bottles as a low-cost lighting system was developed by the Brazilian Alfredo Moser; however, the diffusion of this solution is due to Illac Diaz who, in 2011, founded the My Shelter Foundation in the Philippines and developed the solar bottle project as a social enterprise, also generating jobs for the local population. Over time, Liter of Light has developed low-cost and low-tech projects to light up homes, schools and streets even at night.
Beyond humanitarian initiatives, the spread of upcycling has led over time in the Global South to the birth of real entrepreneurial activities, promoting a vision of integral sustainability in the local area, with a triple impact: environmental, economic and social. These include start-ups EcoKaari (India) and Green Glass (Chile).
EcoKaari is a start-up founded by Nandan Bhat in September 2020 in India, born with the aim of helping to solve the problem of packaging waste management, especially those that are more difficult to recycle.
The name of this social enterprise comes from the combination of “Eco” (ecological) and “Kaari”, which derives from “Kaarigar” (craftsman), demonstrating the close relationship between local craftsmanship and the environment, both interconnected and interdependent. In fact, the Indian artisan heritage has always been inspired by nature; furthermore, for thousands of years, traditional craft techniques have been based on optimizing materials and minimizing waste.
EcoKaari thus uses upcycling to transform packaging waste into accessories and clothing of high aesthetic quality, using the “charkha” (spindle) and the manual loom. The fabrics are made entirely by hand by people, especially women, who come from more vulnerable backgrounds, making EcoKaari also act as an agent of social change.
Thus, sustainable and ethical alternatives to the fast-fashion industry are proposed and, at the same time, a possible solution to the waste crisis, combining traditional Indian craft techniques with fabrics obtained thanks to the “upcycling” process made by local labour.
Similarly to EcoKaari, anche Green Glass, a Chilean startup that produces glasses from used bottles, was also created with the aim of recovering and extending the useful life of packaging waste.
In Chile, although glass has one of the highest recycling rates, used bottles of this material are still perceived as “useless” waste, according to Oscar Muñoz, founder of Green Glass, in 2009, when he was still a young university student , had the idea of creating a company with the aim of recovering all the non-recycled glass bottles in the country and transforming them into glasses, but not just any glasses, but into “designer glasses”. Indeed, in addition to creating new job opportunities for “cartoneros” and basic recyclers, local illustrators are involved in the upcycling process, thus also promoting Chilean art and giving glass waste a renewed aesthetic quality, through decorations inspired by different themes (from Chilean flora and fauna to characters from TV series and films).
In line with a triple-impact approach to sustainability, Green Glass financially supports social and environmental NGO causes, for example, by donating funds for the treatment of children with cancer or to plant new trees in deforested areas; the new production plant was also recently inaugurated and will operate 100% with renewable energies.
The initiatives presented not only demonstrate that upcycling is capable of extending the useful life of an object, dissociating it from the concept of “waste” and improving its perceived value, but above all constitutes a virtuous example of how, starting from the recovery of waste materials you can help the environment and at the same time generate an important social and economic impact for the local area, according to a triple impact approach to sustainability.
Furthermore, projects born in more disadvantaged contexts compared to the global North and originating, in some cases, from practical needs of pure survival, are certainly emblematic cases of how it is possible to transform into a resource – practically and metaphorically – what society considers waste, but also a “bottom-up” response to the crises that are still generated today by the hyper-consumerism of the so-called developed countries.
