Understanding the Lifecycle of an item is an important factor when assessing it’s impact. If a product is made from recycled materials it means that no new materials need to be added, thus eliminating all of the steps involved in farming, harvesting and processing, while preventing the recycled material from becoming waste. This is great, but not necessarily as simple asit sounds. We need to consider what the recycling process is. Does it take a great deal of energy, or use a toxic process? And where will the item go once it’s life has ended? Can it be recycled again? Or does the quality of the material degrade and render it waste at that point? Understanding the lifecycle of a product means understanding where it is from, how long it will last and where it goes once it has been used. We endorse recycling, but not if it creates a toxic product. It is a conundrum: What to do with materials that shouldn’t have been made in the first place? Is there a way to improve them the second time around? This Upcycling is the ideal outcome from the recycling process, and often it comes about through simple and creative processes. Our bias is towards products that have a long lifespan and that are made of pure, natural materials that will quickly dissolve into the earth once they are no longer useful, but as our society continues to make low quality products out of poor materials,we hope to continue to find better ways to recycle them into something better.