The term “upcycling” will never stop bothering me. Firstly, because there’s no such thing as upcycling. There’s an already existing word for creating something more valuable from something less valuable. And it’s “creating.” (Or making, or building, or w/e. Making something more valuable out of something less valuable is normally how making things works.) Second, because usually when people are talking about “upcycling” they’re actually talking about transforming something into a different thing of equal, not greater, value. Thirdly, because I strongly suspect “upcycling” is riffing off of “downcycling”, a term that gets far less widespread use and recognition even though it actually represents an important concept. Recycling is when you start with a used aluminum can and end up with a new aluminum can. Downcycling is when you start with a used plastic bottle and end up with something that is not a new plastic bottle (anything that is not a new plastic bottle, regardless of relative value.) What the word means is you cannot get back to the start of the cycle. So “recycling” means, if people do enough of it, there won’t be any need to make new aluminum cans, or only a tiny number. Downcycling means even if you get something else of value from the plastic bottle, new plastic bottles will still have to be made from raw materials. That doesn’t mean it’s entirely bad or meaningless -- making picnic tables or whatever out of plastic bottles still means those picnic tables don’t have to be made from raw materials, and that’s good. But it’s also not the same thing as recycling, because it doesn’t reduce the need for raw materials to create more of the thing being recycled. If it doesn’t cycle back to its original form, it is downcycling by definition, because it does not change the need for new that-things.