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Downcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of lesser quality and reduced functionality. The goal of downcycling is to prevent wasting potentially useful materials, reduce consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution, and lower greenhouse gas emissions (though re-use of tainted toxic chemicals for other purposes can have the opposite effect) as compared to virgin production. A clear example is plastic recycling, which turns the material into lower grade plastics.

The term downcycling was used by Reiner Pilz of Pilz GmbH in an interview by Thornton Kay of Salvo in 1994.

Characteristics of downcycling are lower reusability (in comparison with "classic" recycling), lower amount of iterations inside the cycle with each iteration of downcycling, quality of downcycled things deteriorates and after the last iteration the product has been downcycled to the par of general waste.

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More Downcycling reviews

review by Clay_Miller. March 11, 2010

posted in Green Living

Downcycling Gives Trash Another Chance at Life

Downcycling means the reuse of a product for alternative purposes or the recycling of material into lesser quality. Most recycled industrial nutrients (materials) lose viability or value in the process of recycling. This means they can only be used in a degraded form for components other than their original use. This may sound bad, but at least the materials are being reused and not thrown away. Some examples of downcycling: recycling plastics turns it into lesser … more

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