As spring arrived in southwestern Alaska, a handful of people from the state Department of Fish and Game rose early and climbed into small airplanes. Pilots flew through alpine valleys, where ribs of electric green growth emerged from a blanket of snow. Their shadows crisscrossed the lowland tundra, where thousands of caribou had gathered to calve. Seen through the windscreen, the vast plains can look endless; Wood-Tikchik State Park’s 1.6 million acres comprise almost a fifth of all state park land in the United States.

As the crew flew, it watched for the humped shape of brown bears lumbering across the hummocks. When someone spotted one, skinny from its hibernation, the crew called in the location to waiting helicopters carrying shooters armed with 12-gauge shotguns. 

Over the course of 17 days, the team killed 94 brown bears — including several year-old cubs, who stuck close to their mothers, and 11 newer cubs that were still nursing — five black bears and five wolves. That was nearly four times the number of animals the agency planned to cull. Fish and Game says this reduced the area’s bear population by 74 percent, though no baseline studies to determine their numbers were conducted in the area. 

The goal was to help the dwindling number of Mulchatna caribou by reducing the number of predators around their calving grounds. The herd’s population has plummeted, from 200,000 in 1997 to around 12,000 today. But the killings set off a political and scientific storm, with many biologists and advocates saying the operation called into question the core of the agency’s approach to managing wildlife, and may have even violated the state constitution. 

The Board of Game, which has regulatory authority over wildlife, insisted that intensive control of predators in Wood-Tikchik was the best way to support the struggling herd. But the caribou, which provide essential food and cultural resources for many Alaska Native communities, are facing multiple threats: A slew of climate-related impacts have hampered their grazing, wildfires have burned the forage they rely on, warmer winters may have increased disease, and thawing permafrost has disrupted their migrations.

With conditions rapidly changing as the planet warms, wildlife managers nationwide are facing similar biodiversity crises. Rather than do the difficult work of mitigating rising temperatures, state agencies across the country are finding it easier to blame these declines on predation.

“We don’t want to talk about how the tundra is changing, because that’s something we can’t fix,” says Christi Heun, a former research biologist at Alaska Fish and Game. 

In Wyoming, where a deadly winter decimated pronghorn and mule deer, the state spent a record $4.2 million killing coyotes and other predators and is considering expanding bear and mountain lion hunts. Wildlife officials in Washington are contemplating killing sea lions and seals to save faltering salmon populations from extinction. In Minnesota, hunters are inaccurately blaming wolves for low deer numbers and calling for authorities to reduce their population. Culls like these are appealing because they are tangible actions — even when evidence suggests the true threat is much more complex. “You’re putting a Band-Aid on the wrong elbow,” says Heun, who now works for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife. 

As the climate crisis intensifies, she and others say, wildlife management strategies need to shift too. “All we can do is just kind of cross our fingers and mitigate the best we can,” she adds. For people whose job is to control natural systems, “that’s a hard pill to swallow.” 

In January 2022, a flurry of snow fell as the Alaska Board of Game gathered in Wasilla, far from where the Mulchatna caribou pawed through drifts, steam rising from their shaggy backs. Its seven members are appointed by the governor. Though they make important decisions like when hunting seasons open, how long they last, and how many animals hunters can take, they are not required to have a background in biology or natural resources. They also do not have to possess any expertise in the matters they decide. Board members, who did not respond to requests for comment, tend to reflect the politics of the administration in office; currently, under Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy, they are sport hunters, trappers, and guides. 

That day, the agenda included a proposal to expand a wolf control program from Wood-Tikchik onto the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge — though that would require federal approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; the government ultimately rejected the proposal.

The conversation began with two Fish and Game biologists summarizing their research for the board on the herd. Nick Demma explained that, like most ungulates, on average half of Mulchatna’s calves survive. In a study he conducted, many died within two weeks of birth; he mentioned as an aside that their primary predators are brown bears. “But I want to stress that this basic cause of death and mortality rate information is of little use,” he quickly added. Predator and prey dynamics are complex: The calves may have died anyway from injury or disease, and their removal may reduce competition for food and resources, improving the herd’s overall health. 

When Demma tried to analyze the existing wolf control program, he found he didn’t have the data he needed to see if removing the canines helped calves survive. In fact, from 2010 to 2021, when Fish and Game was actively shooting wolves, fewer caribou survived. So the researchers turned their attention to other challenges the herd might be facing. 

His colleague, Renae Sattler, explained that preliminary data from a three-year study suggested there could be a problem with forage quality or quantity, especially in the summer. This could lower pregnancy rates or increase disease and calf mortality. In the 1990s, the herd had swelled as part of a natural boom-and-bust cycle, leading to overgrazing. The slow-growing lichen the animals rely on takes 20 to 50 years to recover. Compounding that, climate change is altering the tundra ecosystem the animals rely upon. She also found that today, 37 percent of the sampled animals had, or were recently exposed to, brucellosis, which can cause abortions, stillbirths, and injuries. Biologists consider such high levels of disease an outbreak and cause for concern. 

Sattler also noted that half of the animals that died in the study’s first year were killed by hunters taking them out of season — meaning the predators killing the most adult caribou were people. For all these reasons, the biologists suggested that the Board of Game reconsider the wolf control program.

Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, who oversees the agency, immediately questioned their conclusions, and their recommendation. Killing predators, he said during the meeting, “seems like one of the only things that’s within our direct control.” In other words, it was better than doing nothing. 

Demma seemed taken aback, and chose his words carefully. “I guess what we are kind of trying to present there is just the information,” he told the board. “It’s — you know — wolves aren’t an important factor right now.” The meeting broke for lunch. When it resumed, the board unanimously voted to continue the wolf program through 2028, and, even more surprisingly, to add brown and black bears over a larger area. The public and Fish and Game biologists didn’t have the typical opportunity to comment on this expansion of predator control.

When he heard what happened, “I just was stunned. I was shocked,” says Joel Bennett, a lawyer and a former member of the Board of Game for 13 years. A hunter himself, Bennett served on the board under four governors and recalls his colleagues having a greater diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Their votes were always split, even on less contentious issues. The unanimous vote “in itself indicates it’s a stacked deck,” he says. That’s a problem, because “the system only works fairly if there is true representation.” 

In August, Bennett and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance filed a lawsuit claiming the agency approved the operation without the necessary “reasoned decision-making,” and without regard for the state’s due process requirements. Bennett also was troubled that the state has tried to keep information about the cull private, including where the bears were killed. He suspects that, to have slain so many animals in just 17 days, the flights might have veered beyond the targeted area. He also wonders if any animals were left wounded. “Why are they hiding so many of the details?” he asked. A public records request reveals that although the board expected the removal of fewer than 20 bears, almost five times that many were culled without any additional consideration. 

Alaska’s wildlife is officially a public resource. Provisions in the state constitution mandate game managers provide for “sustained yields,” including for big game animals like bears. That sometimes clashes with the Dunleavy administration’s focus on predator control. In 2020, for example, the board authorized a no-limit wolf trapping season on the Alexander Archipelago, a patchwork of remote islands in southeast Alaska. It resulted in the deaths of all but five of the genetically distinct canines. The Alaska Wildlife Alliance sued, a case Bennett is now arguing before the state Supreme Court. “That was a gross violation of ‘sustained yield’ in anyone’s definition,” he says, adding that even today, there is no limit on trapping wolves there.

Once, shooting bison from moving trains and leaving them to rot was widely accepted. Attitudes have evolved, as have understandings about predators’ importance — recent research suggests their stabilizing presence may play a crucial role in mitigating some of the effects of climate change. Other studies show predators may help prey adapt more quickly to shifting conditions. But Bennett worries that, just as Alaska’s wildlife faces new pressures in a warming world, management priorities are reverting to earlier stances on how to treat animals. “I’ve certainly done my time in the so-called ‘wolf wars,’” Bennett says, “but we’re entering a new era here with other predators.” 

Even as legal challenges to the board’s decisions move forward, scientific debate over the effectiveness of predator control has flourished. Part of the problem is that game management decisions are rarely studied in the way scientists would design an experiment. “You’ve got a wild system, with free-ranging animals, and weather, and other factors that are constantly changing,” says Tom Paragi, a wildlife biologist for the state Department of Fish and Game. “It’s just not amenable to the classic research design.” Even getting baseline data can take years, and remote areas like Wood-Tikchik, which is accessible only by air or boat, are challenging and expensive places to work. 

Paragi has for more than a decade monitored the state’s intensive wildlife management programs and believes predator control can be effective. Looking at data collected since 2003, he notes that when Alaska culled wolves in four areas in a bid to bolster moose, caribou, and deer populations, their numbers increased. They also remained low in those areas where wolves were left alone. (His examination of this data has not yet been published or subject to peer review.) Elsewhere in the state, removing 96 percent of black bears in 2003 and 2004, reducing hunting, and killing wolves boosted the number of moose. Heavy snowfall during the next two winters killed many of the calves, and most of the bears returned within six years, but Paragi still considers the efforts a success. By 2009, the moose population had almost doubled.

He’s also not convinced that Demma and Sattler were right when they told board members that predation doesn’t appear to be the most pressing issue for the Mulchatna caribou. He says record salmon runs have likely brought more bears near the park and the calving grounds, and warmer temperatures have fostered the growth of vegetation that provides places to hide as they stalk caribou. As to the suggestion that the herd is suffering from inadequate food supplies, he notes that their birth rate has been high since 2009. That’s often a strong indicator of good nutrition. 

But Sattler says, “It isn’t that cut-and-dried.” A female caribou’s body condition, she explains, exists on a spectrum and affects her survival, the size and strength of any calves, and how long she can nurse or how quickly she gets pregnant again. “The impact of nutrition is wide-reaching and complex, and it isn’t captured in pregnancy rates alone.” Understanding how nutrition, brucellosis, and other factors are impacting the herd is complicated, she says. 

There are a lot of interacting factors at play on the tundra — and among those trying to determine how best to help the herd. “Part of the frustration on all sides of this is that people have different value systems related to managing wild systems,” Paragi says. To him, last spring’s bear kill wasn’t truly a question of science. “We can present the data, but what you do with the data is ultimately a political decision,” he says. 

Sterling Miller, a retired Fish and Game research biologist and former president of the International Association for Bear Research and Management, acknowledges that crafting regulations is left to the politically appointed Board of Game. But Miller says the agency tends to dismiss criticism of its predator control, when there are valid scientific questions about its effectiveness. In 2022, Miller and his colleagues published an analysis, using Fish and Game harvest data, showing that 40 years of killing predators in an area of south-central Alaska didn’t result in more harvests of moose. “Fish and Game has never pointed out any factual or analytical errors in the analyses that I’ve been involved with,” he says. “Instead, they try to undercut our work by saying it’s based on values.”  

Miller also was involved in what remains one of the agency’s best examples of predator relocations. In 1979, he and another biologist moved 47 brown bears out of a region in south-central Alaska, which resulted in a “significant” increase in the survival of moose calves the next fall. But Miller says Fish and Game often misquotes that work. In reality, due to a lack of funding, Miller didn’t study the young animals long enough to see if they actually reached adulthood. Similarly, Fish and Game conducted an aerial survey this fall of the Mulchatna herd, finding more calves survived after the bear cullings. But Miller and other biologists say that’s not the best metric to measure the operation’s success: These calves may still perish during their first winter. 

The Alaskan government is the only one in the world whose goal is to reduce the number of brown bears, Miller says, despite the absence of baseline studies on how many bears are in this part of the state. It irks him that the state continues to use his research as justification for allowing predator measures like bear baiting. In most parts of Alaska, Miller says, “the liberalization of bear hunting regulations has just been so extreme.” 

While last year’s bear killings were particularly egregious, similar cullings have gone largely unnoticed. State data shows over 1,000 wolves and 3,500 brown and black bears have been killed since 2008 alone. In 2016, for example, the federal government shared radio tag information with the state, which used it to kill wolves when they left the safety of the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve — destroying so many packs that it ended a 20-year study on predator-prey relationships. “There weren’t enough survivors to maintain a self-sustaining population,” recounted an investigation by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The nearby caribou herd still failed to recover. 

Multiple employees for Fish and Game, who didn’t want to be named amid fear of repercussions, told Grist that the agency was ignoring basic scientific principles, and that political appointees to the Board were not equipped to judge the effectiveness of these programs.

Even these criticisms of the agency’s science have been subject to politics: This summer, a committee of the American Society of Mammalogists drafted a resolution speaking out about Alaska’s predator control — only for it to be leaked to Fish and Game, which put up enough fuss that it was dropped. Link Olson, the curator of mammals at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, was one of many who supported the group taking a position on the issue. Olson says that even as someone who “actively collect[s] mammal specimens for science,” he is deeply concerned with Alaska’s approach to managing predators.

A month later, 34 retired wildlife managers and biologists wrote an open letter criticizing the bear cull and calling the agency’s management goals for the Mulchatna herd “unrealistic.” Meanwhile, neither Demma nor Sattler, the biologists who cautioned the board, are still studying the herd; Demma now works in a different area of the agency, and Sattler has left the state and taken a new job, for what she says are a variety of reasons. 

Every fall, millions of people follow a live-streamed view of the biggest bears in Katmai National Park, which sits southeast of Wood-Tikchik. The animals jockey for fish before their hibernation, in an annual bulking up that the National Park Service has turned into a playful competition, giving the bears nicknames like “Chunk,” and, for a particularly large behemoth, 747. 

Though marked on maps, animals like 747 don’t know where the comparative safety of the national park ends and where state management begins. This can mean the difference between life and death, as Alaskan and federal agencies have taken very different approaches to predator control: The National Park Service generally prohibits it. This has sparked a years-long federalism battle. Back in 2015, for example, the Board of Game passed a rule allowing brown bear baiting in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, leading the Fish and Wildlife Service to ban it in 2016. The state sued, and in 2020 the Trump administration proposed forcing national wildlife refuges to adopt Alaska’s hunting regulations. Similarly, the National Park Service challenged whether it had to allow practices like using spotlights to blind and shoot hibernating bears in their dens in national park preserves. In 2022, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal agencies have ultimate authority over state laws in refuges; last year, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

How these agencies interact with local communities is markedly different, too. Both Alaska Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have regional advisory groups where residents can weigh in on game regulations, but Alissa Nadine Rogers, a resident of the Yukon- Kuskokwim Delta who sits on each, says that, unlike the federal government, it feels like “the state of Alaska does not recognize subsistence users as a priority.” On paper, the state prioritizes subsistence use, but under its constitution, Alaska can’t distinguish between residents, whereas the federal government can put the needs of local and traditional users first. This has frequently led to separate and overlapping state and federal regulations on public lands in Alaska. 

Many people in the region rely on wildlife for a substantial part of their diet. Since the area isn’t connected by roads, groceries must be barged or flown in, making them expensive — a gallon of milk can cost almost $20. In addition to being an important food source, caribou are a traditional part of her Yupik culture, Rogers explains, used for tools and regalia. It’s a real burden for local communities to be told they can’t hunt caribou, which has driven poaching. As state and federal regulations have increased restrictions on hunting, she says residents have difficulty obtaining enough protein to sustain themselves through the winter. “If people don’t understand how it is to live out here, what true perspective do they have?” she asks. “Subsistence users are the ones who bear the burden when it comes to management. And a lot of the time, folks aren’t feeling that their voices are being heard or adequately represented.”

Yet Rogers says state and federal systems can provide an important balance to each other, and she approves of Fish and Game’s predator control efforts. As the former director of natural resources for the Orutsararmiut Native Council, she helped the council write a resolution, later passed by the statewide Alaska Federation of Natives, supporting last spring’s bear and wolf cull. She thinks officials should focus more on climate change but believes culling remains a useful tool. “It gives a vital chance for the [caribou] population and immediately supports growth and recovery,” Rogers says. She also asked Fish and Game to institute a five-year moratorium on all hunting of the herd. “If we go any lower, then we’re pretty much gonna be facing extinction.”

Who gets to make choices about the state’s fish and wildlife resources is a point of increasing tension this year, as a lawsuit unfolds between the state and federal government over who should manage salmon fisheries on the Kuskokwim River, to the west of the Togiak refuge. All five of its salmon returns have faltered for over a decade — making game like caribou even more critical for local communities. (In sharp contrast, to the east of the river, Bristol Bay has seen record recent returns, showing how variable climate impacts can be.) The Alaska Native Federation and the federal government say fishing should be limited to subsistence users, while the state has opened fishing to all state residents.

To ensure Alaska Native communities have a voice in such critical decisions, the Federation called for tribally designated seats on the Board of Game this fall. “We need to have a balanced Board of Game that represents all Alaskans,” says former Governor Tony Knowles. He, too, recommends passing a law to designate seats on the board for different types of wildlife stakeholders, including Alaska Native and rural residents, conservationists, biologists, recreational users, and others. Knowles also proposes an inquiry into Fish and Game’s bear killings, including recommendations on how to better involve the public in these decisions. “We deserve to know how this all happened so it won’t happen again.”

It’s clear to many that business as usual isn’t working. “I have no idea how the state comes up with their management strategy,” says Brice Eningowuk, the tribal administrator for the council of the Traditional Village of Togiak, an Alaska Native village on the outskirts of the Togiak refuge. He says Fish and Game didn’t tell his community about the bear cull, and he expressed skepticism that primarily killing bears would work. “Bears will eat caribou, but that’s not their primary food source,” he says.

Part of the solution is setting more realistic wildlife goals, according to Pat Walsh, whose career as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist involved supervising the caribou program in the Togiak refuge. Recently retired, he says the current goal for the Mulchatna herd size was set 15 years ago, when the population was at 30,000, and is no longer realistic. Reducing that goal could allow targeted subsistence use — which might help ease some of the poaching. Though Fish and Game has killed wolves around the Mulchatna herd for 12 years, he points out the caribou population has steadily dropped. “We recommended the board reassess the ecological situation,” he says, and develop goals “based on the current conditions, not something that occurred in the past.” 

Today’s landscape already looks quite different. Alaska has warmed twice as quickly as the global average, faster than any other state. When Rogers was in high school, she tested the permafrost near her house as an experiment. As a freshman, she only had to jam the spade in the ground before she hit ice. By the time she was a senior, it thawed to a depth of 23 inches — and in one location, to 4 feet. Summers have been cold and wet, and winters have brought crippling ice storms, rather than snow. Berry seasons have failed, and the normally firm and springy tundra has “disintegrated into mush,” Rogers says.

Feeling the very ground change beneath her feet highlights how little sway she has over these shifts. “How are you gonna yell at the clouds? ‘Hey, quit raining. Hey, you, quit snowing’?” Rogers asked. “There’s no way you can change something that is completely out of your control. We can only adapt.”

Yet despite how quickly these ecosystems are shifting, the Department of Fish and Game has no climate scientists. In the meantime, the agency is authorized to continue killing bears on the Mulchatna calving grounds every year until 2028. (The board plans to hear an annual report on the state’s intensive management later this month.) As Walsh summarizes wryly, “It’s difficult to address habitat problems. It’s difficult to address disease problems. It’s easy to say, ’Well, let’s go shoot.’” 

Management decisions can feel stark in the face of nature’s complexity. The tundra is quite literally made from relationships. The lichen the caribou feed on is a symbiotic partnership between two organisms. Fungus provides its intricately branching structure, absorbing water and minerals from the air, while algae produces its energy, bringing together sunlight and soil, inseparable from the habitat they form. These connections sustain the life that blooms and eats and dies under a curving sweep of sky. It’s a system, in the truest and most obvious sense — one that includes the humans deciding what a population can recover from, and what a society can tolerate. 

As another season of snow settles in, the caribou cross the landscape in great, meandering lines. There are thousands of years of migrations behind them and an uncertain future ahead. Like so much in nature, it’s hard to draw a clear threshold. “Everything is going to change,” Rogers says.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In an era of climate change, Alaska’s predators fall prey to politics on Jan 10, 2024.

At this point, it’s common knowledge that bottled water contains microplastics — fragments of the insidious material that can be as small as a bacterial cell. But the problem is much worse than previously known: It turns out that bottled water harbors hundreds of thousands of even tinier pieces of the stuff.

A paper published Monday used a novel technique to analyze one-liter samples of bottled water for plastic granules, going down to just 50 to 100 nanometers in length — roughly the width of a virus. They found nearly a quarter of a million of these tiny particles per liter, about 10 to 100 times more than previously published estimates.

“We’ve opened up a whole new world,” Wei Min, one of the paper’s authors and a chemistry professor at Columbia University, told Grist. Until now, scientists lacked a quick and efficient way to identify nanoplastics, hindering research on their health and environmental impacts. 

To conduct their analysis, researchers at Columbia and Rutgers universities filtered bottled water from three different brands through an ultrafine membrane. They then shone two lasers, calibrated to recognize the chemical bonds binding the nanoplastic particles, onto the membrane. Then it was a simple matter of counting all the different particles of plastic. They estimated that a typical one-liter bottle contains 240,000 of them.

Sherri Mason, an associate research professor at Penn State Erie who studies microplastics but was not involved in the new research, called the technique “groundbreaking.”

”I was blown away,” she told Grist. “It’s just really good.”

What’s more, the researchers were able to differentiate between types of nanoplastic. To their surprise, most of the particles were not polyethylene terephthalate, or PET — the material most water bottles are made of. Rather, they found more particles of polyamide (a type of nylon) and polystyrene, suggesting that the pollutants are, in a bit of irony, getting into bottled water as a result of the filling and purification process. 

Polyamide also made up the bulk of the contamination by mass for two of the bottled water brands; the third brand showed a higher level of PET.

The findings have significant implications for human health, since nanoplastics are small enough to pass through the gastrointestinal tract and lungs. After entering the bloodstream, they can lodge in the heart and brain, and can even cross through the placenta to infiltrate unborn babies. It’s not yet clear how the particles impact the body, but toxicologists worry that they could leach chemicals or release pathogens that they picked up while floating around in the environment. Some research suggests potential damage to DNA and the brain, as well as to the immune, reproductive, and nervous systems.

“We know we’re getting exposed, but we don’t know the toxicity of the exposures,” said Beizhan Yan, another of the paper’s co-authors and an environmental chemist at Columbia University. He called for further collaboration with toxicologists and public health researchers to better characterize the risks. For now, he said he opts for tap water whenever possible; it tends to have less plastic contamination.

Wei sees a handful of promising directions for further research. First, his team could expand the number of plastic polymers it can identify using the laser-microscope technique; their most recent paper only looked at seven. They could also look for nanoplastics in other places, like packaged food or wastewater from washing machines, and improve the technology to detect even smaller particles.

“Fifty to 100 nanometers is our current detection limit, but that’s not a hard stop,” Wei said. 

Mason said the research should inspire action from U.S. policymakers, who have the power to limit plastic production by supporting the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act — a federal bill that was reintroduced in Congress for the third time last October — or by endorsing plastic reduction as part of the United Nations’ global plastics treaty.

“I don’t want a plasticized world,” she said. “We need to make it clear to our representatives that we need to chart a new path forward.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Bottled water has up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously thought on Jan 9, 2024.

Quick Key Facts

• Upcycling is the reusing of discarded objects, materials and other waste, for repurposing into something new of higher value and different use.  
• Upcycling reduces waste in landfills, where products take forever to break down and emit greenhouse gases while they do. Upcycling plastic in particular also reduces pollution from manufacturing and conserves resources, as it reduces the need for new plastic products. 
• Upcycling is more environmentally friendly than recycling, which uses more energy (which means fossil fuels), water and other resources in its processes of breaking down. Recycling also is now found to release large amounts of microplastics into the environment. 
• Some things that can be upcycled into other goods are: cardboard, glass, plastic, metal and tin cans, wood, paper, styrofoam and other non-biodegradable packaging, and clothing.
• Upcycling food waste is a process being utilized to create new food and beverage products, as well as others that utilize the oils in wastewater from food processing facilities to make fertilizer, cosmetics, feed and energy, which eliminates the need for wastewater treatment facilities. 
• Indirectly, objects that are upcycled help reduce the energy and water needed to manufacture new materials.
• There are companies who are now trying to take care of construction and demolition waste, which amounts to 600 million tons of debris a year with new innovative and functional building design products made with debris. 
• Upcycling in the fashion industry is one of its hottest current trends. 

What Is Upcycling?

Many of us are familiar with the phrase, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” in terms of sustainability, but it’s become apparent that “Reduce, Reuse, and Repurpose” might be a smarter avenue in terms of reducing waste streams. 

Right now globally, 2.12 billion tons of waste is dumped annually. Many industries, particularly textiles, contribute not only to microplastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, but also poisonous gases in the atmosphere. 

Doubling down on not always purchasing new things helps to reduce waste and conserve valuable resources.

Upcycling is the process of using items that might be discarded to create a new use for them, often one with higher value. It’s currently being done in fashion, with household items, plastic waste and other areas with creativity and innovation by households and businesses. 

History and Evolution of Upcycling

While the term “upcycle” didn’t make its way onto the scene until the 1990s, the concept could be as ancient as the stone tools that prehistoric humans may have reused for both practical and nostalgic reasons.

During World War II, Britain mandated clothes rationing because many supplies were used to produce war uniforms, and about a quarter of the British population was involved in war efforts. As a response, they created a “Make-Do and Mend” campaign to help citizens creatively figure out ways to make their clothes last longer. 

Because supplies were so scarce, it became important to repair, recycle and make clothes from scratch. Women couldn’t buy fabric, and often had to resort to using household textiles like curtains and tablecloths. Sometimes parachute silk was used for underwear, nightgowns and wedding dresses. 

In the 50s and 60s, upcycling entered the art scene with avant garde artists that will be discussed below.

When the UK faced a major recession in the 80s and 90s, upcycling or “customizing” became popular again, with many youth upcycling second-hand clothes.

The first mention of the term upcycling appears in a 1994 article in the architecture magazine Salvo, where mechanical engineer Reiner Pilz stated, “I call recycling down-cycling. What we need is up-cycling, thanks to which old products are given a higher, not a lower, value.” 

The word upcycling then emerged and became popular in 1998 in Gunter Pauli’s book Upcycling: The Road to Zero Emissions, More Jobs, More Income and No Pollution.

Now upcycling is emerging through the lens of climate change, and with concern for how waste impacts the natural environment. 

While many are creating an industry around it globally in developed nations, some are introducing it as an industry in developing nations.

Upcycling and the Environment

Upcycling has a number of positive direct and indirect environmental impacts. 

First and Foremost, Upcycling Reduces What Ends up in Landfills

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 292 million tons of municipal solid waste was generated in 2018. Of this total only 94 million tons was recycled, 25 million tons was composted, and another 17 million tons of food was managed with other methods.

That still leaves a whopping 152 million tons of waste in the landfills generating greenhouse gases as they slowly break down, and increasing plastic pollution in the environment.

Upcycling Reduces the Extraction of Natural Resources

When you upcycle, you reduce the need to extract raw materials like steel, oil, lumber, forest resources, plastic, natural gas, coal and minerals to create something new. It also reduces the need for synthetic materials which are made from petrochemicals and not readily biodegradable.

It also helps you reduce water use. Textiles and garments alone are the second most water-consuming industry, with every process of manufacturing dependent on it from dyes, specialty chemicals and washing and rinsing.  

Upcycling Lowers Carbon Emissions, Because of Less Manufacturing

According to the EPA, in 2019 the industry sector produced 23% of carbon emissions in the processing of raw materials into a finished product. 

While recycling is better than going to the landfill, and it produces less greenhouse gas emissions than manufacturing of new materials, it still produces carbon emissions.  

Upcycling and the Fashion Industry

Fashion, particularly fast fashion, is one of the largest issues of pollution in landfills. 

Globally, about 85% of clothes ends up in landfills or burned. Many of these clothes are not recyclable in the first place, since plastic and synthetic fibers like polyester, nylon and acrylics are made from crude oil, which makes them impossible to reuse in other ways.

An estimated 13 million tons of textile waste a year comes from the manufacturers themselves, as well as retailers with the fashion industry contributing roughly 10% of all global carbon emissions and with plastic fibers in the clothes contributing to microplastic pollution. 

Currently, there is a rise in the Zero Waste Fashion sector, with upcycling fashion brands emerging, many of them luxury brands. 

In Asia, Cambodian company Tonlé sifts through leftover fabrics from large garment factories, using larger pieces to make new clothes, and smaller pieces for spinning into yarn for new designs. In Hong Kong, the brand Heritage ReFashioned makes luxury handbags with upcycled vintage textiles from China, Japan and Southeast Asia. Their mission is to turn forgotten textiles, like Japanese Kimono silk, into something more valuable.

In New York, Zero Waste Daniel by Daniel Silverstein uses fabric scraps to make custom clothing lines that look like mosaics. Zero Waste Daniel also has a buy back program. 

RE/DONE is an online luxury label that features pieces made with reconstructed vintage sweaters, sweatshirts and denim.

Founded by surfer Kelly Slater, the brand Outerknown has a selection of upcycled items that involve upcycled cotton, recycled polyester and other materials. Their other clothing is Blue-sign certified, which means no harmful chemicals are used in its manufacturing process.

There are other more established brands doing upcycled lines.  

Patagonia offers ReCrafted, which is clothing made exclusively from Patagonia products that have been brought back to the company through its Worn Wear Program.

Denim brands like Levi’s and Madewell allow customers to return old jeans so that the company can give them new life as something different. Denim collected by Madewell is upcycled into insulation for construction. Levi’s also offers instructions on how to repurpose their denim.

Coach also has (Re)Loved, an initiative in which consumers can shop pre-used Coach bags or even trade in their used bags so that they can be remade into a new design.  

Upcycling and Art

In the early 1900s, French artist Marcel Duchamps coined the term “found art” or “ready-mades” where he created art from what was considered trash and other discarded items. This was later adopted widely by other artists in the Dada movement, a European avant-garde movement that emerged during World War I and would eventually give way to the Junk Art Movement of the 1950s.

Artist Robert Rauschenberg was a popular artist on that scene and was best known for making hybrid painting-sculptures he called “combines” out of litter from New York’s city streets – lightbulbs, chairs, tires, umbrellas, street signs and cardboard boxes.

In the 1960s, Franco-American artist Arman created a series called “Accumulations,” where he aggregated trash in airtight glass boxes to comment on a society in which everything seems disposable after a single use.

Contemporary artists have also employed other methods now to comment on the waste crisis through art, like Brazillian artist Vik Muniz, whose artistic project Waste Land used the trash from the world’s largest landfill in Rio to create pieces of art that featured renderings of the garbage pickers, with the goal to sell and donate all the proceeds back to them. 

In the end he was able to raise $250,000 that went to the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramacho to build houses and improve infrastructure.

Currently the upcycled art movement seeks to specifically help eliminate waste while creating art. One artist, Wim Delvoye, does an intricate carving of tires. 

In Canada, artist Angie Quintilla Coates makes reclaimed art pieces like vases and lamp bases out of old plastic shampoo bottles, laundry detergent containers, mouthwash bottles and other items. 

Upcycling Food Waste

About 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted annually, with food waste in landfills being one of the leading contributors of greenhouse gases. Upcycling food is one way to help reduce this waste stream.

The Upcycled Food Association (UFA) defines upcycled foods as those that “use ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to human consumption, are procured and produced using verifiable supply chains, and have a positive impact on the environment.” 

Many companies use imperfect fruits and vegetables that wouldn’t be sold to market as they are, or to create other products like soups, sauces and chutneys. There are a number of brands now that also utilize it to create new food products like veggie chips and other snack foods in beverages.

There have also been a lot of innovations in upcycling food by using food byproducts left over during production.

Specialty spirit Wheyward Spirit utilizes whey, a liquid byproduct of cheese production. 

The Supplant Company is creating sugars from fiber and upcycles the fiber-rich structural plant parts from agricultural side streams, such as straw and stalks, as well as cobs of corn, wheat and rice.

They claim it has the same texture and taste as cane sugar in baked goods and other treats. Since the ingredient is made from fiber, it retains certain beneficial fiber-based qualities: it is lower in calories, has a lower glycemic response and is a prebiotic.

The company Take Two makes upcycled barley milk, which is the first plant milk to utilize spent grain, of which over eight billion pounds is wasted annually from beer brewing processes.

Other companies are also creating new products while addressing socio-economic problems.

Australian company Aqua Botanical is working to create drinking water to combat water scarcity, by extracting, filtering and mineralizing the water used from the production of juice concentrate.

In West Africa, Sweet Benin is a company creating cashew apple juice. Only 10 percent of the nearly 280 million pounds of cashew apples are processed in Benin every year, contributing to massive amounts of food waste. In 2018, the company produced 180,000 bottles of cashew apple juice and is working to help cashew farmers supplement their off-season income.

There are many others. 

A 2021 study published in Food and Nutrition Sciences revealed that only 10% of consumers are familiar with upcycled food products, but once educated about them, 80% say that they would seek them out.

Upcycling and Architecture

The construction industry accounts for nearly 40% of waste generated globally with an estimated 35% ending up in landfills. It consists of a variety of rejected debris, including concrete, wood, bricks, glass and steel. In 2018, according to the EPA, the U.S. alone created 600 million tons of waste in this sector. 

As many seek to be more sustainable, upcycling has also been making its way into architecture through creativity and innovation.

In Las Rasas, Madrid, eco-fashion pioneer Ecoalf and tech design studio Nagami created their Net Zero, Zero waste boutique by 3-D printing the interior with plastics, repurposing more than 33 tons of it. Every wall, shelf and display table inside the store is also made from recycled plastics. 

The Sint Oelbert gymnasium school designed by Grosfeld Bekkers van der Velde Architecten is the first permanent structure that utilizes cladding created by Pretty Plastic. Cladding is used on exteriors of buildings to provide thermal insulation and weather resistance, and to improve the appearance of buildings. Pretty Plastic’s shingles use recycled PVC windows and gutters to create products that are wind and waterproof, fire-resistant and capable of withstanding extreme weather conditions. 

Scottish start-up Kenoteq has also created the world’s first sustainable bricks. K-Briq are bricks that look and weigh as much as a typical brick and behave like a clay brick in terms of insulation, but are made of 90% construction and demolition waste and emit less than 10% of the carbon emissions of traditional brick production. 

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The EcoARK, an exhibition hall in Taiwan, is one of the first buildings made with Polli-bricks made from plastic bottles. The Polli-bricks are translucent and have a honeycomb interlocking structure. The building’s Polli-bricks consist of more than 1.5 million plastic bottles.

In 2018, to align with the opening of the NYCxDesign Festival, Zero Waste Bistro, a food pop-up, was created with materials built from recycled food and beverage cartons made by the Rewall Company, which has since been acquired by Continuous Materials, which specializes in making roof coverboards from plastic and paper waste.

Ecobricks are more of a DIY-structured solution, where households and communities can take empty plastic bottles and fill them with clear and dry used plastic waste. The bottles can later be used and built into cement for garden structures or other uses.

Not everyone agrees that this is useful, particularly those who believe that reducing and stopping the use and purchase of plastic is the better solution. 

Ideas for Upcycling at Home

One of the great things about upcycling is it allows you to exercise your creativity when trying to create something new. D-I-Y ideas for upcycling items, particularly for the home, are exhaustive and can involve utilizing old jars, paint cans, wine bottles, clothing, broken dishes, old furniture and other objects to make candles, glasses, pendant lights, planters, wreaths, baskets, different furniture and more. 

Check out a curated list of some ideas from EcoWatch here.   

Here are some more from DIY Craftsy. 

Upcycling Clothing

Many things can be done with clothing by either upcycling old clothes into a new outfits by dying, embroidering, turning them into quilts, scrunchies or tote bags, or using them to clean the house. 

They could also be turned into more interesting items. Denim, for instance, can be made into coin purses, organizers, jewelry, upholstery and other useful things.  

Some people are also using fabric and linens, alongside plastic, to create upcycled zero waste baskets. Here is a tutorial on how to make them.  

For the Garden and Yard

Unique upcycling ideas for the yard include upcycled wood pallet planters, used door sheds and windchimes from utensils.

Here is a link to ideas from Sustain My Craft Habit, which says you don’t always just have to limit yourself to what’s at your house — you can also find items at neighborhood yard sales, Facebook Marketplace, Freecycle and thrift stores. 

Upcycling Food at Home 

There are many ways to use as much as you can, and extend certain products you buy. You can reuse leftover jar juices as marinades or vinaigrettes, turn stale bread into croutons, regrow foods like romaine and onions, to name a few. 

Food Scraps as Fertilizer for Plants

Besides composting, certain kitchen scraps can make excellent fertilizer.

Banana peels are filled with potassium that helps plants grow flowers and fruit. You can apply it by liquifying the banana, or letting the peel decompose on the soil. You can also soak the peels overnight in water, and pour the water into the soil. 

Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen and other minerals plants like. It’s recommended that grounds be spread on alkaline soil or for acid-loving plants. A list of acid-loving plants can be found here. 

Egg shells are an excellent source of calcium which can give plants a great boost. Crush them into a powder-like consistency and sprinkle on soil or around trees. 

Upcycling Organizations and Businesses

Upcycled Food Association

An organization that is working to build a food system where all food is elevated to its best and highest use, has members internationally and offers Upcycled certification for products. 

Upcycling Group

Collaborates with various entities to offer end-market solutions for waste materials such as LDPE bags and wraps, flexible film packaging, glass, bottles, beverage cartons, mixed plastics, paper, coffee and soda cups, hemp, solar panels and food waste.

Upcycle That

A website dedicated to ideas for what and how to upcycle fabric, glass, leather, metal, paper, plastic, rubber, wax and wood. 

Upcycle Africa

An organization focused on re-orienting and re-educating African communities towards a greener future through the process of upcycling, where the community can reduce waste accumulation by transforming useless products, materials or energy into something functional.

Shop Repurpose

A nonprofit organization based in NYC that raises funds to support workforce development through the resale of high-end items in our online and Soho Vintage store.

Freecycle

A grassroots nonprofit movement of people who are giving and getting stuff for free in their own towns to keep good stuff out of landfills.

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