Looptworks — Making Upcycling Work in a Big Way

Ever hear of upcycling?  It’s a term coined by a professor of a German university in the 1990s, meaning the repurposing of material that is deemed to be worthless, and adding value to create a product that can now enjoy a new life.

Think of how few things were thrown away during the Great Depression.  Think of some of today’s cultures, say Native Americans, and the deep abiding respect they maintain for nature, and how unwilling they are to buy, consume, and discard “stuff.”

I came across Looptworks the other day, a company that takes dozens of different materials that would have otherwise been discarded and sent off to landfills, and reprocesses them into new, high-value and really cool products.  Scrap neoprene from waste in the process of making surfers’ wetsuits becomes cases for laptop computers.   Scrap cotton becomes new T-shirts and other clothing.

Looptworks rep Cy Cain made me aware of the ecologic impact of making a cotton shirt in today’s world, based largely on the water required to grow the cotton in the first place.  “We’ve already paid the price of bringing that cotton into the world.  Now that we have all that material, it seems senseless to throw it away.”  Makes sense to me.