CHICAGO — In high school, Jordan Parker wrote a paper on plastic pollution titled: “Is our country doomed to be buried beneath its own garbage?” Decades later, that question continues to galvanize Parker, who uses the pronoun them. In 2017 Parker founded the Triveni Institute, an environmental nonprofit that recently hosted a fashion show in which local designers created looks and outfits exclusively using single-use plastic, thrifted clothes and “found objects.” “The intention of these designs is to create beautiful art out of plastic pollution and help people lean into this issue in a way t…
