Welcome to RecyclArt Costa Rica. RecyclArt trains and empowers women to design and craft eco-jewelry and fashion accessories from recycled materials, then helps them by marketing their crafts through the broad network of resellers.

The groups of women RecyclArt works with are those responsible for recycling in their home communities, whether a neighborhood or a small village.  In the rudamentary recycling center they manage, they first collect, sort and prepare the raw materials of their creations. Women recyclers help protect the environment by training their communities to recycle.

After their recycling day, at home, in spare time, they then give a second life to aluminum pull-tabs and cloth remnants, creating fine fashion accessories that help them sustain their community, their recycling activity and their family.

Behind each article,
crafted from what we commonly call trash,
is a dream of saving the world,
in the hearts and hands of village women recyclers,
who create beauty from “basura”, to educate their community
in the environment’s four “R’s” (refuse-reduce-reuse-recycle).

Who would guess that the origin of such art
is discarded beverage cans and cloth remnants?

Photograph: Laura Millet; text: Daniela Arguedas 

 Photograph: group activity in Escazú with representatives from the women groups