The growing interest in sustainability also concerns the use of terms such as riciclo, recycling, and upcycling, where the translation into Italian is already more difficult: creative regeneration process? Let's admit it, it's very long and complex and difficult for many to understand. But it's a significant difference: while recycling is almost always an industrial process to produce new raw material, upcycling generally transforms a raw material or a product to create a new one, with a new value or higher value. Both processes have in common the reduction of waste, but recycling is usually the result of an industrial process that starts from a product, from a raw material, and that through processing, generates a new raw material, called secondary raw material. Let's think for example of the recovery of plastic, which if collected can be mechanically or chemically recycled to obtain a new raw material, ready to be transformed again. In this process, a bit of the initial value is lost, let's also think of paper that cannot be recycled infinitely. Upcycling, on the other hand, is a creative process that is generally artisanal, based on inventiveness, manual skills and aims to create new uses, new products. While recycling is generally industrial, upcycling is more artisanal. This means that the quantities produced are different as are the costs.
We at Seama see this well because to produce an upcycling bag we use a greater number of hours than an industrial process, because we start from the valorization of materials through Italian labor.
