Sarah Chojecki, Fashion Design ’14, is a lawyer and knitwear designer who created Merino de Valdes, an environmental certification for ranchers on the de Valdes peninsula of Argentina. The certification protects biodiversity and maintains grasslands by limiting sheep populations and panning the killing of predators and competitive herbivores. Six ranchers have signed on thus far, and the organic wool is sold to designers in the U.S. and Argentina. “I believed that as along as a product was natural it couldn’t pose a serious threat to the environment,” Chojecki says. “But I learned that in most places where sheep are raised for meat or wool, wildlife populations are disappearing at an alarming rate.”
