Upcycling Contest Sponsored by Etsy and Bazaar Bizarre
by Celine Ruben-Salama, New York, NY 
on 01. 5.07
You’ve got until January 15, 2007 to design and create an object to sell on Etsy made of materials that would have otherwise been thrown away or recycled (new adhesives and fasteners are permitted if required.) Coined by William McDonaugh and Michael Braugart in their trail blazing book Cradle to Cradle, upcycling is a word that simply put it refers to transforming trash into treasures. Ecoist bags, made of candy wrappers and rejected printed papers, illustrate the upcycling principle clearly. To conserve resources, we should all be doing more of it.
Contest entries will be judged by the organizers of The Bazaar Bizarre and by the Etsy team. The winners will be chosen on account of their ingenuity, originality and usefulness of their product.
One lucky first prize winner will get a trip to San Francisco, CA, and three nights hotel, so that you can take advantage of your free booth at next year’s Bazaar Bizarre and make even more loot. Second prize gets a free booth as well and three third prize winners get a sweet Etsy gift pack full of goodies. So, check out the contents of your recycling bin and get crafting!
Want to win a contest but not in the mood to craft? Perhaps film is more up your alley? Check out the Seventh Generation + Treehugger Convenient Truths Contest here. :: Etsy
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I dont think that creative reuse projects such as this one meet the criteria for Upcycling, at least according to my reading of C2C...Upcycling implies design that encourages future refinement of embodied resources, while this contest advocates crafting new objects out of trash rather than refining the embodied resources.
I agree with luedtke. According to C2C, upcycling refers specifically to products and components designed as biological nutrients (things which can be composted) or technical nutrients (items that can be reused without loss of quality (examples are polypropylene and aluminum).
A bag made from juice boxes is creative, but the handbag cannot be disassembled into new items (a juicebox is usually a mylar/poly/adhesive sandwich).