Scaling Up Upcycling: A Comparative Analysis of Furniture, Lighting and Bags Made Through Repurposing (Author Accepted Manuscript, Preprint)

Upcycling offers a transitional approach to the circular economy, using current material recovery systems in ways which increase the value of waste materials, namely through reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing, and repurposing. Research tackling the challenges of scaling up upcycling has largely focused on meso and macro level factors and lacks details in terms of the day-to-day practices of upcycling designers. This chapter offers a comparative analysis of 20 upcycled products to contribute to an understanding of scaling up upcycling through the lenses of operational scalability and business viability. Cross-disciplinary literature review identifies the craft nature of production in the repurposing approach of many upcycling enterprises as the key challenge for scaling-up. Comparative analysis of the cases confirms this challenge and identify material sourcing, design, production, marketing and distribution practices as helpful factors. The findings contribute to supporting designer-makers and other practitioners in creating and scaling up upcycling enterprises.