Profiles
Paola Cortese
Indonesia Country Manager, Plastic Bank
Paola Cortese possesses 10+ years of experience in building, running and monetising small businesses in Design, F&B and Sustainability fields. As the founder of Cortese Design Studio – an eco-forward interior design studio, Zero Waste Life HK – a consultancy agency that focuses on lowering barriers to sustainable behaviour, and a Climate Reality Leader, Paola is frequently invited to speak in public on the topic of designing a circular lifestyle in the urban environment. Paola is also the first zero-waste practitioner who successfully reduced her annual solid household waste to 540 grams (2018 data) while living and running her business in cosmopolitan Hong Kong. Now settling in Bali as the Indonesia Country Manager of Plastic Bank, Paola hopes to expand her impact by cleaning the environment and tackling the plastic issue while alleviating extreme poverty nationwide, in a country that produces the second biggest ocean plastics in the world.