Dianna Cohen

Cohen was born into a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California. Her father was a filmmaker, and her mother the director of the Los Angeles Free Clinic.^[4] She attended University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she studied biology before shifting her major to art.^[5]

Following her graduation, Cohen began working in collage, initially using deconstructed brown paper bags, and later incorporating plastic. Her first solo exhibition of the bag series was in 1994.^[5]

After eight years of working with plastic bags, Cohen realized the plastic was degrading. In a 2015 interview she said: “At first I got excited because I thought that it meant the plastic bags were ephemeral and organic like us, and that they had a finite lifespan.” In researching the subject, she discovered that "plastic photodegrades or heat-degrades by breaking apart, but does not disappear."^[5] In 2009, after learning about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, she founded the Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC) with her sister, Julia Cohen, Manuel Maqueda, Daniella Russo and Lisa Boyle.^[2][6] She has led the Plastic Pollution Coalition's efforts to eliminate the use of single-use containers for beer, water and other drinks at music festivals and concerts.^[7]

Cohen has received awards for her environmental activism. In 2017,^[8] she was awarded the Global Green Award. She was named Environmentalist of the Year by SIMA in 2019.^[9] In 2016, she was presented the inaugural Snow Angel Award by the Sun Valley Film Festival.^[10]

Cohen and her partner, Jackson Browne, live in Los Angeles.^[11] They were co-executive producers on the 2020 documentary The Story of Plastic. ^[12] She has surfed since 1996.^[13]