June 24th is National Upcycling Day. Whether you choose to recycle, upcycle or repurpose, get in touch with your creative side by turning something old into something fresh, new, functional, and beautiful.

Upcycling is a growing trend that’s still under the radar for some. Simply, it’s all about taking old objects and furniture and adding your own creativity and craft to make it something new, unique, and beautiful.

Upcycling Day is all about celebrating the art of upcycling. However, with that art also comes the focus on sustainable use of household goods, recycling items instead of being wasteful, and the many different ways we can reuse things that we might think are completely useless at first glance.

Though the term has been around since the 90s, upcycling first rose to prominence when it started trending in 2002. Even before then, people have been finding new uses for old things since time immemorial.

Since our first ancestors roamed on two feet, it’s been natural to reuse our possessions and find new ways to benefit from them. It’s only since modern society dawned that we started chucking a lot more away.

The book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things, released in 2002 by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart, brought upcycling into the modern vernacular. Not only did it have all kinds of tips on upcycling, the book itself was upcycled from plastic and soy, which was used to form the ink.

Since then, upcycling has caught the world’s imagination. Both those dedicated to finding sustainable ways of living to save the planet and the more artistically inclined have been coming together to find all-new ways to use the old things cluttering our lives and filling our waste dumps.

Upcycling Day naturally arose as a way to bring attention to the craze and to encourage everyone and anyone to get involved in throwing less away and upcycling more.