Upcycle for new lights

Creating unique lights for your home can be easy, if you know where to look. Items normally considered as ‘waste’ can be transformed into something beautiful
and valuable, writes Mala Ashok.

The three R’s — Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle — have made deep inroads into home decor today. India has always been good in recycling, as most of us do not like to waste. With Navaratri looming on the horizon, many may be racking their  brains as to what can be recycled into good Bommai Kolu items. Last year, my uncle built a beautiful mandap made
entirely out of injection medication bottles!

This kind of recycling is often known as upcycling, where by-products, waste
materials, useless and/or unwanted products are transformed into new
materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value. Known also as creative reuse, there are many websites like Pinterest which offer you inspiration to transform items from a state of disrepair to something really beautiful. 

Today, one of the trends in upcycling is upcycled lighting. This involves items like household objects, industrial cast-offs, vintage farm tools and more being
salvaged and upcycled into lighting fixtures that are elegant, funky, or pure wow. This trend is not evident just in homes; you can see it even in eateries —
including the upscale Indian restaurant, Malai Marke in New York. The lighting of the restaurant has been innovatively designed using empty green wine bottles. The light is seen to glow from bulbs surrounded through the green wine bottles arranged in a circle.

A dedicated career
Upcycling lighting is a full-time job for some. Robert Nicholas, a resident of North Carolina, USA, makes chandeliers from all kinds of vintage objects, with each selling for up to $6,000 (nearly 4,00,000). Robert’s materials range from the wooden roof of an old gazebo to tobacco stakes, which were used to harvest and dry tobacco leaves. Many of Robert’s fixtures have an urban-chic sensibility, despite their authentic rural roots. He terms this combination ‘modern folk’. Rather than what an object was, Robert puts a lot of thought into what it will be. He believes it really is about the aesthetic look of it and the potential of what it can become; along with its potential for a ‘wow factor’.

A similar philosophy is echoed by Antonia Edwards in her book, Upcyclist: Reclaimed and Remained Furniture, Lighting and Interiors. The philosophy basically entails taking something that is considered redundant and has no value and transform it to give it value again.

Plastics as lights

Another upcyclist is Alvaro Catalan de ocón. He travelled to South America to take part in a project led by Hélène le drogou, psychologist and activist who was concerned with plastic waste contaminating the Amazon river. Currently, large amounts of PET bottles are washed into the waters by tropical rains — the discarded material pulled into the rivers, floating out into the Pacific Ocean, where over time it has accumulated into an
immense island, spanning larger than the area of Spain!

The short lifespan of PET bottles, despite the amount of time taken to produce them, led to Alvaro trying to find a creative way to transform the plastic into a functional and desirable product for the market after its initial intended use. He soon started engaging the local community to turn containers for liquids into ceiling lamps.

Using the surface of the PET bottle as the warp on which to weave, local craftsmen come into the picture to create the weft, ultimately giving the lamp shades their form — the lines where the plastic moulds meet, serving as horizontal and vertical references for cutting and spinning the textiles. The original structure of the bottle top remains in place to help join the electrical components to the lamp shade.

Thus an ugly, potentially hazardous waste item is transformed to a thing of beauty. Indeed, upcycling is uplifting.

There are so many things that you could use for lighting in your home — mason jars, jam bottles and wires, among others. All you have to do is just look around your home and see how you could use it. Just remember, no item is considered waste when you can creatively reuse them somewhere in your home. So, start foraging your discarded waste and create something magnificent!