Recycling Green Products
February 2, 2010
When considering green interior products for your facility, an important factor in choosing the product with the least environmental impact is what happens to it at the end of its useful life.
There are typically four different things that can happen: the product can be disposed of in a landfill, or it can be recycled, upcycled or downcycled.
Recycling, upcycling and downcycling all break the product down and turn it into something else. Upcycling refers to breaking the product back down into raw materials that can make new products. Downcycling implies that the materials from the product can only be made into lesser quality products.
Recycling and upcycling are the best choices, but downcycling is better than nothing. In all cases, simply repurposing or reusing the product as-is is the best case scenario.
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