CP Kelco explains why upcycled ingredients can help minimize resources while adding value to quality personal care products and give consumers positive feelings - a win for all involved – and sheds light on its own upcycled ingredients
During a 1994 interview, the German engineer Reiner Pilz is credited with coining the word upcycling when he said, “Recycling? I call it down-cycling. They smash bricks, they smash everything. What we need is upcycling, where old products are given more value, not less.
What he meant was, with recycling, the properties of the material may be lost as it is broken down. There is reduced functionality so expectations end with recycling. Pilz believed in an opposite vision of not just reducing harm by discarding an object in the recycling bin instead of the trash but diverting waste entirely.
Upcycling also involves a new way of thinking as the personal care industry accelerates its transition from a linear economy to a circular economy. Currently, many manufacturers take material from the Earth and make products from it that are eventually thrown away (Figure 1). This model assumes an end to the process or even an end to the corporation’s responsibility when the product reaches the consumer and waste is disposed.
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