Circularity Day NYC

Celebrate our local circularity champions

Barnard College teamed up with Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, and the Columbia Climate School to host a city-wide celebration of the powerful sustainability practice known as circularity. Circularity Means: We Share, We Reuse, We Repair, and We Build a More Sustainable, Equitable, Resilient City.

On March 10, 2023, we celebrated Circularity Day NYC 2023 to highlight local circularity champions and announce new initiatives to identify and support New York’s small businesses, community organizations, and schools, leading the way to a more circular and equitable New York.

Learn about our circularity champions below.

New York City's 2023 Circularity Champions in Business

Damon Straub

We focus on high quality bicycle service, custom built bicycles and restoration of vintage bicycles. We do not sell new bikes or parts and accessories. This way, we can focus on the work we love – working on bikes.

Uyen Tran

Uyen, with the TômTex team, developed the TômTex material, a circular, and bio-based design. TômTex emphasizes a circular business model. We use water-based green chemistry to develop fabrics are 100% bio-based and 100% biodegradable.

Irma Torres

Irma is a fashion designer of Mexican descent and homemaker. She is a skilled artisan specializing in hand embroidery. Her handcrafted goods are made out of up-cycled and cast-off materials. Custom Collaborative has given her the opportunity to develop her skills and become a professional in the field.

Francois Servranckx

Francois Servranckx is passionate about designing solutions to limit our impact on the environment, while generating revenues. He started Green Gooding, an innovative circular economy rental system in Brooklyn to encourage people to rent instead of buying equipment they don't often use.

The BK Rot Team

BK ROT is New York City's first community-supported, bike-powered, fossil fuel free food waste hauling and composting service. Our project is staffed by young people of color who haul residential and commercial organic waste and transform it into high quality compost.

New York City's 2023 Circularity Champions in Community

Myles Smutney

Myles founded The Free Store Project, a community-centered initiative aimed to solve economic inequality while addressing climate change by restoring hope and neighborhoods with freestanding pop alt-markets. Sharing hubs are open and accessible to the public 24/7.

Dan Bergsagel

Dan is a founder of Reclaim NYC, a group of professionals that provides research and advocacy on C + D recycling in NYC. RECLAIM NYC aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from material use related to construction, to create local jobs, and a resilient local supply chain in New York City.

Pamela Davis

Pamela staffs the GrowNYC compost drop-off at the local greenmarket, in Inwood. She explains to people how to compost, keeps the site tidy, and even cheers on the runners as they complete the weekly road race that finished next to her drop off site. Pamela has played an integral part in the success of the Inwood compost program because of her perseverance through the pandemic, the city compost rollouts, and more.

Sam Pressman

Sam uses reclaimed wood to build food garden boxes around New York City. He works with school groups, community groups, church groups, and all public entities that are looking to create spaces to grow food, support community connections, learn about environmental science, and to support resiliency.

Gabriella "G" Funk

G is using her platform as an EcoAthletes Champion at NYU, to advance climate action on a global and local scale. Circularity is a key aspect of her advocacy and activism as she is playing a lead role in the #Clothes4Good initiative.

New York City's 2023 Circularity Champions in Art

Simone Schiefer

Simone Schiefer is a designer currently based in New York City. She works across a variety of mediums and explores the notion of value through a cultural, material and social lens. She regularly works with up-cycled materials in her personal and professional design practice.

Sarah Nsikak

Sarah Nsikak is a Nigerian-American living in Brooklyn, New York. The exorbitant amount of waste generated in the fashion industry inspired her art practice. She hand quilts pieces made exclusively of recycled material sourced from fashion designers based in New York. Special textiles are also sourced through vintage stores and estate sales.

Samhita Kamisetty

Samhita Kamisetty is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Portland, Oregon, Kamisetty grew up in Bangalore, India. She works with drawing, bundle dyeing and digital media, exploring ideas of intimacy, domesticity and memory, focusing on how mundane domestic spaces and the objects within them can be emotionally transformative and carry spiritual and symbolic meaning.

Lauren Gaston

Lauren advocates for sustainability in the entertainment industry. In her costume designs, she sources fabric responsibly. Lauren is a member of the Sustainability Committee and International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 829 where she helps put together circular design workshops and resource lists for New York designers in the entertainment industry.

Mazlyn Ortiz

Mazlyn Ortiz was born in 1995 in Baltimore. She completed a BFA in Textiles/Surface Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2013 and a MA in Mix Media Textiles from The Royal College of Art in 2020. Mazlyn also co-runs a mending and repair project, GOING. All the materials she uses are found or second hand.

New York City's 2023 Circularity Champions in Schools

Orlean Sorio and Paula Lucas

Orlean is a teacher and Paula is the school secretary at the X811 school in the Bronx. They helped host Bronx swap event last year and advocated for a Zero Waste Pledge Program. They have also helped foster student lead sustainability projects such as a school garden and a community farm stand.

Christopher Grullon and Victor Gelpi

Victor and Christopher are students at Columbia Secondary School and have operated several initiatives to combat plastic usage at their School including: the implementation of the teracycle system, a water bottle initiative, and several ongoing meetings with the DOE, which has been very responsive and driven to the cause of changing the plastic usage in public school cafeterias.

Bianca Bibiloni

Bianca is a Sustainability Coordinator & Teacher, Q014, Queens. She joined GrowNYC’s Recycling Champions program and their Seed to Plate Program. She also hosted a Sustainable STEAM Fair in partnership with GrowNYC, NY Sun Works, and NYSCI. She also fostered many garden initiatives for students.

Alfred McKoy

Alfred is one of the OFNS Heavy Duty staffers, at X131 (Bronx) the Albert Einstein Campus. He endorsed implementation of the new cafeteria recycling program and waste sorting stations and the Bronx Curbside Compost Expansion.

Samantha Nguyen

Samantha is an English as a New Language Teacher at K516 in Brooklyn. She has organized neighborhood clean ups, book swaps, bring your own reusable utensil day and has implemented school-wide zero waste end-of-year clean outs.

Nominees

Balaji Santhanam - Recyck
Julie Thibault-Dury - Closiist
Joris Van Bree - CptnZeppos
Debby Lee Cohen - Cafeteria Culture
Andy Rose - Indeed Innovation
Lauren Sweeney - DeliverZero
Karla Magruder - Accelerating Circularity
Tricia Carey - Renewcell
Marco Saavedra - La Morada
Nancy Rhodes - AlterNew
Amanda J Katzenstein - Spruzed, Inc.
Erin Beatty - Rentrayage
Heather Fedewa - Big Reuse
Michael Grayson - tech repair
Caroline Vanderlip - Re:Dish
Reham Fagiri - AptDeco
Laurence Carr - Laurence Carr Inc.
Michael HIrschhorn - mebl
Holly Gallagher - Arts and Crafts Beer Parlor
Michael Cyr - Cup Zero
Sarah Edwards - Esembly Baby
Jessica Schreiber and Camille Tagle - Fab ScrapNominees

NYC Farmers Markets Workers
Sharon Silbermann - Chair of the textile waste committee of the solid waste advisory board in Manhattan
Roxana Bosch - School admissions counselor at Columbia Secondary School
Robert Markuske - Sustainability teacher at NY Harbor High School
FabNYC Community leaders
Joan Levine and Sarah Martin - Morningside Heights and West Harlem Sanitation Coalition Street Lab
Janet Rodriguez - Leader of SoHarlem
Jenny Cooper - Founder and leader of IXV Coffee
Maxine Bedat - Director of the New Standard Institute
Zoe Cook-Nadel - Director of Second Chance Toys
Joy Suarez - Mixed Media
Amelia Lang - Set Design
Cecilia Andre - Sculpture and Mixed Media
Art.Coop - Multiple
Myrah Brown Green - Fiber Arts
Kate McGuire - Fashion

Bridgett Artise - Sustainable Fashion Week US
Suzie Hicks - Children's Books
Elise McMahon - Likeminded Objects
Jenna Breiter - Textiles
Mae Colburn - Hand woven rag rugs
Bryn Pratt-Boyden - Fashion and textiles
Dara Benno - Used EVA shower curtains
Sasha Fishman - Sculpture
Dee Dee Maucher - Bio Organics
Ariela Kanarek - Textiles and Hardware
Aradhita Parasrampuria - Synthetic biology and Textiles
Abby Cheney - Sculpture and Painting
Carolina Muñoz Awad - Installation and Performance
Aishah Bostani - Fashion and Architecture
Lisa Slocum - Found Materials
Adam Tyler Cohen - Recycled Materials
Eugene DeVito - Cleaner at Bishop Ford Pre-K Center
Jose Taveras - Fireman at PS 971 (Brooklyn),
Liz Skovera - Special Education Teacher at X176
Kim Maxwell - Art educator in Brooklyn

What is Circularity?

Circularity is a potent strategy that reduces emissions and waste while building local jobs and community resilience. From community compost to school uniform swaps to local repair shops to artists and designers using reclaimed materials, circularity is all around us, led by everyday New Yorkers working to make their city a better place.

Sandra Goldmark on circularity

How does circularity work?

Circularity is a simple concept. It means that when we create a product, we take into account the end of its life, where it will end up when we’re done with it. In a circular economy, once we finish with a product, we place it and its components right back into the supply chain instead of disposing of it in the world's overwhelmed landfills. We design with the full life cycle in mind. We share, we reuse, and we repair.

Importantly, circularity puts the power to create a more sustainable future in the hands of every company, government, institution, and individual.

Circularity Day NYC 2023 recognizes that these simple practices can be leveraged as a powerful climate and economic strategy and represent our path to a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient city.

Steering committee members

Danielle Azoulay, Columbia University Sustainability Management
Jenn Beisser, Morningside Area Alliance
Sam Bennett, Repair Shop
Michael Braithwaite, Next Big Thing Consulting
Thaddeus Copeland, NYC Department of Education, Office of Sustainability
Fred Copeman, Columbia Climate School
Rahsaan Harris, Citizens Committee for New York City
Emma Hopson, Rheaply
John Holm, Pyxera Global/Circular City Coalition
Rajiv Joshi, Columbia Climate School
Patrick Keyes, NYC Department of Education, Office of Sustainability

Alexander Landau, Columbia Climate School
Delaney Michaelson, Barnard Student Government
Imke Myrick, Circular City Week
Rebecca Naegle, Barnard Design Center
Laura Novich, Hyloh
Ngozi Okaro, Custom Collaborative
Ushma Pandya Mehta, ThinkZero
Anna Sacks, @thetrashwalker
Tara Sansone, Materials for the Arts
Rachel Smith, Repair Shop
Michelle Tulac, Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Zach Venning, Closed Loop Partners