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Recycled Planet Store is a New York based company, which has a fabulous handcrafted selections of gifts and home accessories, to accent every style of living. We work daily with several artisans from poor communities in Brazil, to create functional gifts and decorative accessories, exclusive pieces of wearable art from recyclable material. Each design in our company is unique; every piece is original and handmade. In fact, our assistance are also involved in create jobs and new opportunities teaching and working unique techniques and designs to develop new products with a wonderful attitude toward life, recycling and redirecting waste reduction with creativity and good taste.
We have brought together more than a hundred works, an extensive collection of furnishings with different techniques, many, which can be found nowhere else.
Our products will inspire you by sharing the grace within them. Recycling is the way of the future and works best when we remember to buy and use products made from recycled materials.
Delight yourself with our remarkable new concept of art.
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 CLAUDIA GARZESI
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DESIGNER
Claudia was born in São Paulo, Brazil. Impressed by the fine arts books from the company where her father used to work and the crafts created by her mother, Claudia’s childhood was surrounded by art and creativity that she applied on her coloring books, her passion in primary school.
At 12 years old, Claudia already dominated the painting on fabric, canvas and plaster. The art and desire to create played a big part in her life, her books were always filled with her draws. She enjoyed making dresses for dolls with her grand grandmother that was a great artisan with her crochet needles.
During her school years the presence of art stimulating her imagination and providing a positive therapeutic balance always helped her to archive good results. Therefore Claudia Graduated in Dentistry at the Universidade Metodista de São Paulo; fitting as a glove the basic requirements to be a dentist: be patience and firm artisan hands.
In 1993, Claudia moved to New York where she initially planned to improve her English skills; but she felt in love with the “city that never sleeps”. The city’s environment awareness and recycling program somehow attracted her since she arrived. While studying English at the Baruch College, she noticed that the retail market scenario was going through changes. The mass production of articles for trade initiated a change demanded by consumers seeking products that have a meaning in its global context. At that moment Claudia recognized an opportunity to associate her interest in artistic creativity and social responsibility to the activity of designing products using recyclable materials in its composition.
In 2002, almost 10 years after her first drawings and ideas, it was possible to establish Recycled Planet Store Inc, where she holds the position of Director of Product Development. Claudia creates useful, unique and exclusive crafts, all hand made using recycled materials like newspapers, magazines, plastic bottles, inner tire tubes and others.
Blending traditional craftsmanship and modern design, she managed to promote sustainable work to produce products in partnership with artisans in Brazil.
After 7 years and about 10 tons of recyclable materials reused, she was able to draw attention to her designs from companies’ buyers like Antrophologie, Forever 21, Heritage 1981, Levi’s, Macy’s, Disney Parks, Coca-Cola Co., Barnes & Noble, Marriot Hotels, Whole Food Market and many more.
Among her customers there are: American Folk Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Jewish Museum, El Museum del Barrio, MTA Transit Museum, New York Historical Society, The New York Botanical Garden, MAD-Museum of Art & Design, these only in New York City. In addition to another 300 stores in prominent museums, art galleries, boutiques and department stores all around the United States.
In 2007, she developed for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the company that regulates the means of public transportation in New York; a unique and licensed line of pieces made from subway maps showing some print defects, illustrating that art has no limits and it can be conceived through any type of material.
Many of her works has been the subject of articles for magazines and newspapers such as Crain’s New York Business, New York Times, Country Living, Teen Vogue, Boho Magazine, Accessories Magazine, New York Post, Home Accents Today, Time Out New York and for two years in a special Christmas Edition-best ecological gifts on channel HGTV.
The basic motivation for Claudia to start this whole journey was to propose a second life to already discarded materials combined with the opportunity to generate jobs, outsourcing its service to increase the artisan’s family income.
Based on this methodology, in 2009 she began a new phase in her work, her didactical phase, producing “ Do-It- Yourself Kits” and packages of eco-parts special for ecological handcrafts that would be the base of inspiration for educators, teachers, artisans, artists or to the housewife that hasn’t yet discovered her talent for art. All Kits contain texts and techniques that are easy to understand and making, including tips on how to maintain quality of the product turning eco-craft into a fun and profitable activity.
All didactic material that Claudia has developed, besides the illustrated techniques on how to reuse much of our daily garbage, she also leave a message for today and for the future, that we must preserve our natural resources, protect nature and recycle.
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ELMA RODRIGUES DA SILVA
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My name is Elma Rodrigues da Silva . I am living in Jandira, São Paulo where I used to work collecting garbage on the streets to be sold for recycling (mainly paper, plastics, pet bottles, etc.). Hauling a heavy wagon made from scrap woods with car tires I used to walk every day at least 8 hours to feed my son and my daughter.
Sometimes, I brought with me things from the streets that could be reused as decoration in my simple home or in my hobby, make crafts. I had no much time for myself or to make things that I liked but producing crafts in the end of the day kept me alive and dreaming. It was my only therapy to start all over again in the next day. At that time I was young and strong, but working in the streets consumed my health. I contracted Bone Tuberculosis and almost lost one of my legs smoking two packages of cigarettes per day.
One day taking a bunch of paper to recycling I found a magazine about crafts and arts that I loved. I took that magazine home and started to read an article about Claudia Garzesi and her work with the artisans. I kept that magazine for a year until I had courage to call her and begin a new path in my life.
Today I consider myself a professional artisan. I learned how to produce crafts that can reach the market and how to keep the quality to sell them. I am not longer working on the streets, I quitted to smoke and I am proud for who I am.
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