DSNY foundation x parley
JOINING FORCES TO SUPPORT the NEW YORK PLASTIC BAG BAN
In collaboration with the Foundation for New York’s Strongest, the official non-profit of the New York City Department of Sanitation, we’re working to bring attention to the trash that ends up in the city’s waterways and empower New Yorkers to take action in support of the plastic bag ban that went into effect in March 2020.
Globally, roughly five trillion plastic bags are used each year. New Yorkers alone use and discard a staggering 10 billion single-use plastic bags annually, and 23 billion statewide. The New York City Department of Sanitation currently estimates that it collects an average of 1,700 tons of plastic bags per week, costing $12.5 million per year in collection and disposal expenses.
Throughout 2019, Parley and the Foundation worked to remove litter from beaches and waterways across the city, creating events in all five boroughs. Hundreds of New Yorkers volunteered their time to collect litter from shorelines and neighboring park areas. Much of that plastic debris intercepted was cleaned, processed and transformed into premium upcycled plastic material to create a special edition of Parley Ocean Bags.
“Plastic bags are used on average just 12 minutes before being trashed, yet last hundreds or thousands of years in a landfill. While it's best to use reusable first, through our work with Parley, we hope to not only help clean up the city's waterways, but turn litter that was clogging up our beaches into a ‘forever item’ that’s reusable, useful, and helps keep additional single-use bags from the waste stream.”
JULIE RASKIN — EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FOUNDATION FOR NEW YORK’S STRONGEST
In Phase 2 of this project, we teamed up with Parsons School of Design. First year art and design students in the Sustainable Systems Course are competing to design one of three Parley Ocean Bags. Three students will be chosen as winners and will have their designs printed on a run of the Parley Ocean Bags and distributed through exclusive retailers in New York City. The collaboration will support the city’s plastic bag ban and spotlight the issue of marine plastic pollution in urban environments.
Photography by Charlie Ruben and Ben Lozovsky