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'TIS THE SEASON As we enter the holiday season, it's worth remembering that this is not only the most wonderful time of the year–it's also the most wasteful. Average household waste generated by Canadian families rises more than 25% over the holidays, according to Gibsons-based nonprofit Zero Waste Canada. Here are some other sobering Xmas stats. 62 BCBUSINESS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 SOURCE: ZERO WASTE CANADA R ecycling, as an exercise in sustainability, has always been fraught. It's been almost 40 years since the introduction of Canada's first municipal recycling program, and yet much of what is produced as packaging, con- sumer or industrial goods still doesn't get recycled. Accord- ing to a 2019 study by Deloitte for Environment and Climate Change Canada, 87 percent of plastics end up in landfills or are leaked into the environ- ment. And that's not just a problem for our planet: it also represents almost $8 billion in lost economic opportunity, according to Deloitte. To recycle is, ultimately, a reductive process—extracting that which has value and leav- ing the rest as waste. A German engineer by the name of Reiner Pilz created an important distinction within the recy- cling field when he coined the phrase upcycling. "Recycling, I call it downcycling," Pilz told SalvoNews in 1994. "They smash bricks, they smash everything. What we need is upcycling, where old products are given more value, not less." Back in 1994, Judy Rom was just seven years old, but even then the founder of the website Upcycle That had an interest in taking old objects and making something new. She remem- bers her mother bringing her to Urban Source, an arts supply shop on Main Street in Vancouver, which she de- scribes as an "iconic" upcycler. "I'd fill up a bag with stuff and work with that. I always loved the unusual, found, reclaimed materials." Upcycle That—which Rom launched in 2012 while working for an ad agency in Cape Town, South Africa—is part inspiration board, part e-commerce site and part sales brochure for her consulting business. Clients who have turned to Rom in Up, Up and Away A growing legion of "upcyclers" is turning trash into treasures—and creating economic opportunities in the process by Matt O'Grady I T ' S A G O OD T H I NG ( quality time ) recent years include rum maker Bacardi, Appleman's Cider and the World Trade Centre mall in Hong Kong. While she sometimes is the person scouring the globe for ma- terials (beyond those which clients supply), often she acts as project manager—sourcing materials, and people, to get the job done. For Bacardi, Rom created a series of upcycled liquor cabi- nets. "They told me a bit about their demographics and who their target market was, and then asked what I would do," she says. "We did something with a steamer trunk—turning that into a bar—and floating shelves." Although the term up- cycling may date back two decades, as a business model it's still finding its feet. "It's more expensive to upcycle something than it would be to just dispose of it, so there has to be other value for the brands to get them to do it," says Rom, who graduated from UVic with a BCom in entrepreneurship in 2010. "Corporations don't just do things out of the goodness of their hearts." She notes that many companies are produc- ing sustainability reports that don't gain public traction, so upcycling presents an oppor- tunity to talk about corporate efforts in a more compelling and creative way. To date, most of her com- missions have come unbidden: with her background in digital marketing, she was able to create a website that ranks highly in Google searches. But to make Upcycle That a viable full-time business, Rom—who also works as an account direc- tor at Vancouver-based website designer GD Commerce and teaches yoga on the side— acknowledges that she'll have to move beyond bespoke projects. Currently, she's in talks with a U.S. company that produces vinyl billboards for stadiums and sporting events. "They're looking to have a sustainable, ongoing option for these materials, which don't have a recycling market," Rom says. She hopes to take their single-use billboards and create a line of backpacks, bags, yoga mats and wallets. The products will, by neces- sity, be more expensive. But unlike eight years ago, Rom says, people show an increas- ing willingness to pay for up- cycled products. "Consumers are really waking up to it and demanding it. They're voting with their wallets." n Within 6 months, ONLY1% OF GIFTS ARE STILL IN USE Canadians use TO WRAP UP PRESENTS EVERY YEAR 6 MILLION ROLLS OF TAPE is generated from giftwrapping and shopping bags each year in Canada 545,000 TONNES OF WASTE