Awareness of upcycling among the French population 2020

With the mass production and planned obsolescence of objects, a growing number of French people, increasingly concerned about the environment, wish to change their consumption patterns. The past few years have indeed been marked by the emergence of new practices aimed at limiting the impact of consumption on the planet, such as recycling, purchasing second-hand items, as well as upcycling. While the first two are rather familiar among the French, the third remains largely unknown today: in 2020, less than one French person in ten was able to give a definition of this practice.

"Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed"

Upcycling is a method that consists in using objects and materials intended to be thrown away in order to reintroduce them into the consumption cycle, after having given them a new value, a different use, an original purpose compared to the one they originally had. This form of top-down recycling, which is part of a broader desire for sustainable development, was generally unfamiliar to the French. But this lack of awareness could be related in part to a lexical point. Indeed, once the source had given the respondents the definition of this term, 23 percent of them said they had already purchased at least one upcycling object, and 28 percent were not certain if they had done so.
The purchase of upcycling items seems to be more widespread among the young population: more than a third of 18-24 year olds had already purchased this type of item, compared to only 19 percent of French people over 45 years old.

Circular consumption, an alternative to fast fashion?

While many sectors may be relevant for upcycling, 22 percent of young people considered the fashion industry to be the first sector where it should be implemented.
The fashion industry is indeed one of the most polluting, and as the environmental and social issues of fast fashion are increasingly taken into account by Europeans, consumers are gradually turning to more responsible alternatives. One of the most widespread is the resort to second-hand clothes. While this model of circular consumption has been around for a while, second-hand is described nowadays in the media as a new trend, and the share of French people buying second-hand products is almost twice as high as it was ten years ago.