Amarildo Silva is a Brazilian artist who transforms old, used car tires into luxurious animal beds for the thousands of strays running through the streets of his hometown.
Amarildo lives Campina Grande, Brazil, where there are 500% more stray animals than homeless people.
The kind-hearted 23-years-old artist has made it his job to care for the homeless animals as well as the streets of his city.
Amarildo worked at a supermarket store two years ago with a dream of being self-employed.
He was thinking of ways to recycle discarded materials to create his art, this is when he noticed that the stray dogs on the streets all curl up at night inside the old, thrown out tires.
Amarildo got a brilliant idea from this scene and started collecting old tires from his city’s streets, parking lots, and landfills.
He thought that the best way to be self-employed would be to find a way to earn money while doing something he is passionate about. And by upcycling used tires into amazing pet beds, the passionate artist has found a way to earn a living while loving his work at the same time.
Not only was he providing much-needed aid to the homeless dogs and cats surrounding him, but he is also helping people and the environment by substantially reducing waste.
After collecting enough tires, Amarildo started transforming the old tires into comfy homes for both pets and homeless animals.
He begins his craftmanship by cutting the tires down into the desired shapes and pieces and gives them a thorough scrubbing.
Then he adds fresh paint to seal and decorate the pet bed by adding in special touches of bone, paw, and heart shapes.
After having the basic structure of the bed all painted and decorated, he sews beautifully printed fabric around soft cushions to make a comfortable mattress for the bed inside the tire, then sews the remaining fabric into a matching pillow to tie the whole bed together.
He sold his first six upcycled pet beds to his coworkers at the grocery store. This was the start of a creative and life-changing business.
Once Amarildo’s pet bed creations started gaining attention from the local community for the massively positive impact he was having on the environment, as well as in the lives of homeless pets, he started receiving invites to demonstrate his work at schools and local events.
Now Amarildo, in addition to creating the business he’s always dreamed of, is also educating people in his region on the importance of sustainability, and how even just one person with a simple idea can have a powerful impact on the world around them.
Thanks to his efforts, his business grow at a tremendous pace in just the last two years, allowing him to branch out with his business ideas even further.
Amarildo now runs Cãominhas Pets as a full-time business and has social media pages on both Facebook and Instagram.
Besides crafting pet beds, Amarildo has branched out by fashioning unwanted mounds of rubber into attractive, colorful planters for decorating the community’s gardens.
Soon the community noticed the large amount of waste that Amarildo was taking off from the streets and landfills, and people began talking about his efforts.
In an interview with the environmental news blog Green Matters, Silva describes why his business is so important in terms of the environment. He said, “Over the course of two years, I already removed 1,500 units of old tires from the environment making only the [pet beds]. This certainly makes a very big positive impact on nature.”
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