With the enormous amount of waste generated in todays society, repurposing options have become a beacon of hope in the fight to salvage the environment. The act of repurposing waste products extends their lifecycle. If a piece of so called garbage can be transformed into something useful and/or valuable, this act postpones and/or prevents it from harming ecosystems.
Recycling has become an essential and popular way of protecting the environment. Within this effort, two main approaches prevail, upcyling and downcycling. Downcycling produces items from used and unused recycled and refabricated products. Unfortunately, these items tend to emerge from this process with a lower quality. With the absence of creative innovation, their value continues to diminish until they are deemed worthless. In contrast, upcycling aims to cultivate waste product value by utilizing artists inventive visions. Captured by the idea that our waste deserves a second chance, artists around the world have been inspired to reduce consumption and pollution through their artistic expression.