How fashion students are helping fight plastic pollution

The first-year students were asked to design and make something “dramatic, flowing and attention grabbing” so Tanya stood out when she attended the Chelsea Flower Show this week.

Tanya, a University of Brighton graduate who received awards in Public Administration and French, is an anti-plastics activist and was a star guest at The Pearlfisher Garden, designed and created by the design agency Pearlfisher, named after the Japanese women who free-dive to retrieve pearls from the seabed.

The company said: “The Pearlfisher Garden, in partnership with Plastic Oceans, highlights the irrevocable impact of plastic waste on our precious ecosystems and is a call to action to brands, businesses and designers to create sustainable lifecycles for products and packaging.”

Tanya Streeter at the Chelsea flower Show © Allan Newnham

Tanya freediving

Tanya is world champion freediver (underwater diving that relies on divers' ability to hold their breath until resurfacing) and for more than two months held the freediving record, greater than the men's record, with a depth of 525 feet which is still the women's world record.

Craig Higgins, University of Brighton Course Leader for Fashion, said: “Students incorporated recycled plastics into the design and representatives from Pearlfisher visited our Grand Parade campus to review designs.

“This was an exciting opportunity for our students and one that supports the worldwide campaign to save our oceans from this plastics crisis, one of the many environmental issues our students are engaged with. The students were very resourceful and inventive, producing a design made from 100 per cent recycled or up-cycled plastic materials sourced locally.”