In ShopAmado, our designer and founder, Lia Santiago collects inventory from family and friends who give us their clothes and jewelry to repurpose. Other items are selected from second-hand stores in NYC and Puerto Rico, as well as Fabscrap, eBay, and Depop. ShopAmado promotes the use of preexisting products to make our art and actively limits the use of brand-new inventory.
ShopAmado promotes the use of these materials because–as much as we love clothing and accessories, and understand trends come in and out and samples are needed to perfect a garment– it does not take away the fact that fashion production makes up 10% of humanity's carbon emissions, which dries up water sources and pollutes them. Only 20% of textiles are collected for reuse or recycling globally and the other 80% ends up in landfills worldwide.
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This is an image of a landfill in Chile where some 59,000 tonnes of clothing arrive each year in Iquique port in the Alto Hospicio located in northern Chile. Clothing can take up to 200 years to biodegrade and experts say it is as toxic as discarded tyres or plastic materials. For this reason, we chose to use these discarded products because they can still be loved.
