Role: Co-Founder, Community Design, Workshop Facilitation & Environmental Education
Partners: GrowNYC, The InterDependence Project, Union Square Greenmarket, PS41, Surfrider Foundation, Open Seas Coalition, BagITNYC, and others
Duration: 2011 – 2016 | New York, New Jersey, Muscat
Context/Background:
My journey within design for sustainability started in the Fall of 2011 with a class called ‘Plastic Bags and NYC’ as part of Pratt Institute’s Graduate Communication Design program and taught by Gala Narezo. The goal was to examine the lack of legislation on plastic bag waste in New York State and to come up with a proposal to address the issue. From that class, along with Gala Narezo (then class professor) and Chantal Fischzang (then class TA), we founded the ‘Plastic Bag Mandala' Project as an alarm against single-use plastic bags.
The Challenge:
Single-use plastic bags were, and remain, one of the most visible and systemic failures of consumer culture. At the time the project launched, New York State had no legislation restricting plastic bag use. The challenge wasn't awareness as most people already knew plastic bags were a problem. The challenge was behaviour change. And behaviour change at scale requires more than information. It requires participation, emotion, and a felt sense of collective responsibility.
The Insight:
The project began in a graduate class at Pratt Institute in 2011, examining plastic bag waste in New York. But the insight that drove everything that followed was this: people don't change behaviour because they're told to. They change when they feel connected — to each other, to the consequences of their choices, and to a shared future.
The mandala became the design response to that insight. A mandala is a symbol of interconnection and of the idea that we are all implicated in each other's wellbeing. Weaving a used plastic bag into a shared canvas required two people to complete it. The act itself became the message.
The Design:
The core installation was an 8x8 foot burlap canvas with a mandala outlined on it. Community members were invited to bring used plastic bags, exchange them for reusable ones, and weave their bags into the canvas as a physical pledge to reduce their consumption.
The design was deliberately participatory, not a poster to be looked at, but an object to be made together. The weaving required collaboration. The pledge required reflection. The canvas grew only through community action.
Alongside the installation, we developed workshops for primary school children integrating visual storytelling, environmental systems thinking, and hands-on making, building ecological awareness through creative practice, not lectures.
PBM Journey — Growing the System:
What began as a class project became a multi-year initiative with genuine reach. The installation appeared at the Union Square Farmers Market, FIGMENT, The New Green City Festival, the New Museum's Ideas City 2013, The Children's Museum of the Arts, Rudolf Steiner School, and Pratt Institute.
The partner ecosystem grew organically — from one collaborator to a network including GrowNYC, the Surfrider Foundation, Open Seas Coalition, BagITNYC, and Jennie Romer, founder of Plastic Bag Laws. Workshops expanded to schools across New York and New Jersey, and eventually to Muscat, Oman.
This wasn't a campaign. It was a living system that expanded through relationships, trust, and the logic of the work itself.
What This Project Demonstrates:
The Plastic Bag Mandala Project is where many of the principles that now define my practice first took shape: designing for behaviour change through participation rather than persuasion, building coalitions across sectors, using creative making as a vehicle for systems thinking, and sustaining engagement through community ownership rather than top-down delivery.
It also demonstrated something I've carried into every project since: the most powerful interventions are often the simplest ones — designed not to explain a system, but to let people experience it together.
Collaborators:
The project began with one partner - The InterDependence Project (The IDProject) under the name "Responsible Consumption", and grew to include Bags For The People, GrowNYC, The Union Square Greenmarket and PS41. It now also includes the partners What moves you?; Green School Alliance; The Surfrider Foundation; Open Seas Coalition; BagITNYC; and Jennie Romer, the founder of Plastic Bag Laws.
