Reducing Waste, Rain or Shine

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The co-founder of a Portuguese upcycling company creates fashion from broken umbrellas.

Throughout her life, Yasmin Medeiros has seen trash as a bearer of destruction. She witnessed the pollution of natural spaces in her hometown of Niterói, Brazil, and became disheartened by wasteful packaging and production while working in marketing and fashion since 2013. But when she co-founded a circular fashion company in Portugal in 2019, Medeiros’ relationship with trash changed. “Trash is luxury,” Medeiros now says.

Since launching R-Coat, an upcycled raincoat brand that has taken Portugal by storm, Medeiros has found her environmental values to be compatible with what she sees as a more creative type of fashion. She now turns broken, discarded umbrellas into articles of clothing — items that, for their uniqueness and story, she considers more luxurious than their wasteful counterparts. 

Heavy winds often accompany Portugal’s rainstorms, leaving the streets a graveyard of umbrellas.

R-Coat sold its first raincoats in May 2021. Medeiros’ co-founder, Anna Masiello, came up with the idea for R-Coat when she began noticing broken, discarded umbrellas littering the streets of Lisbon. Heavy winds often accompany Portugal’s rainstorms, leaving the streets a graveyard of umbrellas. Umbrellas are made of a variety of materials that each require different recycling processes, which means that in most places, you can’t just toss your broken umbrella in a recycling bin. 

Masiello started collecting the umbrellas herself and watching YouTube tutorials about how to make the fabric into jackets. Eventually Masiello hired a few seamstresses and went through a number of prototypes until she was happy with the design. She met Medeiros at a sustainable fashion workshop in Lisbon around this time as Medeiros was completing her masters in Design Management, and together they turned Anna’s idea into a brand. At first, Masiello collected umbrellas herself, but Medeiros and Masiello now enlist social media followers — whom they call Umbrella Heroes — to gather and leave umbrellas at various collection points around the country (plus a few in Italy), which are mapped on their website. 

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The two entrepreneurs used this patchwork of recovered umbrellas to create waterproof coats, hats, and even bags, which they now sell online and in a couple shops around Portugal.

The collection points then send these umbrellas to Masiellos’ garage. Medeiros recalls the revelry of sorting through the scavenged umbrellas that the co-founders stockpiled in Masiellos’ garage. “For me it was magic when I used to go to her place and she was giving me the umbrellas saying, ‘Let’s create things,’” Medeiros says. The two entrepreneurs used this hodgepodge of recovered umbrellas to create waterproof coats, hats, and even bags, which they now sell online and in a couple shops around Portugal.

The consequences of trash hit close to home for Medeiros. As a child, Medeiros lived near a bay in Niterói that was too toxic to swim in. One day, while running along the shore, Medeiros noticed a turtle with plastic wrapped around its neck, bleeding. Through tears she looked to other passersby for help, but no one stopped. “People were looking at it as if it was nothing,” she says.

Now, when Medeiros sits in Masiellos’ garage, she giddily sifts through the trash, seeing its potential for creativity rather than harm, if used responsibly. The products she creates hold stories of these materials’ prior lifetimes. Each product is a unique combination of patterns from the umbrellas at hand. And this makes Medeiros feel connected to her products. 

“I create a relationship with the umbrellas that is really weird but I love it. I look at a specific pattern and I say to myself — it’s luxury,” Medeiros says. And the prices reflect this luxury. She puts together different fabrics and envisions endless possibilities for unique pieces. 

As she spoke with me, Medeiros’ face lit up describing other possible uses for umbrella parts. Over the holiday season, R-Coat used umbrella fabric to craft the strings of ornaments — the rest of the ornament was made of detergent caps. Medeiros is also brainstorming ways to use the metal for earrings. To avoid unnecessary waste, R-Coat also sells “imperfect” and prototype products at discounted prices.

As of February 2023, R-Coat had diverted 2,256 broken umbrellas from the landfill.

As of February 2023, R-Coat had diverted 2,256 broken umbrellas from the landfill. 

While rife with creative potential, the upcycling world can be lonely, says Medeiros, who notes that there aren’t many companies that do what she does. “Sometimes I see all these umbrellas and I think, ‘Am I crazy?’” Medeiros says. 

But when customers and Umbrella Heroes start to see trash the way Medeiros sees it, she says, it all feels worth it. “My friends are telling me, ‘Oh I changed my lifestyle.’ My friends used to buy these luxury brands, but they now want an R-coat,” Medeiros says. 

With a little imagination, a broken umbrella, tossed onto the rain-slicked streets in frustration, becomes a wardrobe centerpiece.

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Lily Olsen
Lily Olsen
Lily is an Associate Editor and Reporter on the Bluedot team — joining from sunny California. She is a recent Princeton graduate with a degree in political science. Her work spans human rights and advocacy through internships at the State Department and the AND Campaign.
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