Marketplace for upcycled, recycled and reused goods

The march of the upcycling initiatives continues! Hard on the heels of our stories about Diana Eng’s “fortune cookie” purses and Rerip’s surfboard-recycling program comes word of Yiuco, an online marketplace that focuses exclusively on products created through upcycling, recycling and reuse. Greek Yiuco only allows items to be listed if they are upcycled, recycled or reused, allowing eco-minded minipreneurs to create an individual storefront and list the goods they’d like to sell. Examples currently listed on the site include wearable rings featuring individual keys from a computer keyboard, for example, as well as a pillow crafted from upcycled materials. Shoppers can search the site by product category as well as by whether goods involve primarily upcycling, recycling or reuse. Creating a store on Yiuco is free, and there are no transaction or listing fees until spring 2011. Thereafter, Yiuco will charge vendors EUR 0.10 per listed item every three months as well as a 3.5 percent transaction fee on each sale. Besides the obvious lustre of sustainability, of course, makers of upcycled and recycled products can also enjoy the benefits of free or inexpensive materials and an embedded story to be shared with consumers. No end in sight to the opportunities here; minipreneurs around the globe — time to get crafting! (Related: T-shirts saved with handstitched lettering & sold to new owners — Festival jackets & bags made from abandoned tents — Five businesses that turn trash into appealing new products.) Spotted by: V. Rentzou