HIRO Turns Diaper Waste Into a Bold NYC Installation

On Wednesday, April 22, HIRO unveiled a bold new traveling installation at Wild Restaurant in the West Village with serial entrepreneur Miki Agrawal, known for founding culture-shifting brands including THINX and TUSHY.

Created as a highly visual Earth Day moment, the installation spotlighted one of the most overlooked environmental issues in everyday life: diaper waste. The average baby goes through roughly 6,000 diapers, each used for only a few hours but capable of lingering in the environment for hundreds of years.

The centerpiece — a striking oversized diaper installation — transformed that statistic into a physical, impossible-to-ignore visual, designed to spark a broader conversation around parenting, consumption, and the systems most people rarely stop to question.

The project ties directly into HIRO’s larger mission. Co-founded by Agrawal and Four Sigmatic’s Tero Isokauppila, HIRO is rethinking one of the largest categories of household waste through fungi-powered technology.

The Earth Day unveiling served as the public debut of this concept in New York before the installation begins traveling nationwide. Positioned just outside Wild, Agrawal’s original West Village restaurant, the experience extended indoors with an intimate press lunch, cocktails, and a walk-through exhibit exploring the lifecycle of diapers, the scale of waste, and how biological innovation could reshape the future of disposable products.

At its core, the event wasn’t just about a product — it was about reframing a familiar, everyday item into a larger environmental conversation. By turning something as routine as a diaper into a large-scale visual statement, HIRO created a moment that was both provocative and accessible, bridging the gap between sustainability, design, and daily life.