This is a new form of dumping ground, not one we visit in order to offload our waste. The plastic that forms Garbage Island originated onshore and is now trapped by winds and currents in a constant, sickening gyration. Though it has been around since the 1950s, the island’s recent exponential growth means it now reaches a depth of 300 feet (the height of the Statue of Liberty) and weighs in at 3.5 million tons. With that rate of growth, it is easy to visualize our grandchildren paddling on California beaches in an ocean of bobbing plastic shards, as the island extends all the way back to our shores. What goes around comes around, indeed.

This is the sort of news story that makes me, as a concerned inhabitant of this planet, want to gently lower my head to my desk in despair. But at the same time, as a designer, I find the story strangely inspiring. It represents a great opportunity for communication and change.

It was this communication challenge that I set to my Environmental Design class for the project: Make Change. The students, a mix of undergraduate and graduate designers, were asked: “When you watch the news or walk down the street, what bothers you? What in the world do you feel needs to change?” Working in teams of four, they chose an issue that mattered to them and conducted detailed research on their subjects. They then designed a site-specific installation communicating the issue to a targeted audience. The objective was not only to communicate the facts but to prompt their audience into action.

I encouraged students to achieve a sustainable approach through original thinking. Designing “green” does not mean just using recycled materials. How can you reduce energy use? Can you source materials locally? Can you use reclaimed or everyday objects in an unexpected way? Can you take a step back and re-define the problem in order to come up with a smarter solution?

Visual Communication Design graduate students Tom Futrell, Cassie Klingler and Erin Williams, along with landscape architect student Katherine Wimble, conceived and designed the Plastic-a-holics project in response to their research on the Garbage Island phenomenon. They simulated the whirling vortex of waste in a heavily trafficked area of the University of Washington campus and experimented with melting everyday plastic waste to form large graphic backdrops. Texts and objects combined to present the scale of the problem as well as suggest alternatives and solutions.

We have all been getting the message lately to cut back on plastic water bottles and shopping bags, but the students brought a fresh angle. They displayed a vast physical inventory of the plastic that populates every part of our daily lives, then borrowed from the language of 12-step programs to suggest how we can break our unhealthy addiction to plastics.

The results of Make Change give me hope as a designer and as an educator. At my company, thomas.matthews, designing sustainably has been a core objective since our founding ten years ago. But most designers still don’t think twice about the waste they propagate, let alone how they could use their skills to create positive change. Why? It starts with education. After decades of being fixated on the latest trends and sexiest materials, educators need to make sustainability an essential part of problem solving. This doesn’t mean forcing “worthy” (student translation: “boring”) approaches down throats but, rather, building it into the creative challenge.

As designers we need to inspire this generation to realize that a sustainable design approach means something smarter, different and more exciting than traditional thinking. We need to lead by example, showing through our own work how these principles can be applied in the real world (and not just for pro-bono projects!).

For designers, the first step is to admit we have a problem. The next step: make change happen.