Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment

• Beyond Recycling - The Many Meanings of the Circular Economy

  When we speak about plastic pollution, a central idea to solve it is that of the circular economy. And when this idea of circularity is mentioned, recycling is often the first thing that comes to mind. But recycling is just one of the elements in the toolbox towards a circular society, and not necessarily the most preferable one. A few months ago, I had the chance to chat about this with Arturo Castillo, an assistant professor in circular economy and circular society at Utrecht University. Arturo is a member of the Scientists Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, and during the negotiations in Geneva, he took me on a journey through the many meanings of the circular economy.

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• Guilt-free plastics? The idea of plastic credits and its realities

  Wouldn’t it be great to have something like guilt-free plastics? A plastic product you can just buy without worrying that you are contributing to pollution in the environment? That’s the promise of plastic credits. The idea is that if you do have to buy a plastic product, this amount of plastic is being offset or saved from the environment somewhere else. This is similar to the concept of carbon credits to tackle climate change. But there’s a lot of criticism of the idea of offsetting plastics or greenhouse gases this way. Are these credits really doing what they claim to do? In this episode we’re going to hear a story from Kenya, and more specifically, Dandora. Dandora is a neighborhood in Nairobi and the home of Kenya’s biggest dumpside - an open field with mountains of trash and waste. It’s the workplace of Dandora’s waste pickers, the people making a living from collecting anything valuable they find on the dumpsite. These waste pickers doing a hard and dangerous job, and face a lot of competition. They compete with the big machines that move the trash around, their fellow waste workers, and now, they are also competing with a new concept: Plastic credits. I learned more about this on the sidelines of the plastic treaty talks in Geneva this summer, where I met Benard Ogembo from Kenya and Conor McGlone from the UK, the two journalists who investigated the connection between plastic credits and the Dandora dumpsite. We were later joined by Arpita Bhagat, the plastic policy lead of GAIA Asia Pacific, an organization with deep insights into the situation of waste pickers. Read Benard's and Conor's story on Desmog: https://www.desmog.com/2025/08/05/new-global-market-for-plastic-credits-threatens-livelihoods-at-kenyan-dump/ Read the GAIA Smoke & Mirrors report: https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/NOV-29-2023_Smoke-and-Mirrors-the-Realities-of-Plastic-Credits-and-Offsetting.pdf Original sounds from the Dandora dumpsite in Anja's intro by James Wakibia. Intro in Dholuo by Benard Ogembo.

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• Teaser - BOY WASTED: A bale of plastic. A mystery body. A global investigation

  +++Podcast recommendation+++ There’s a concrete yard with piles of plastic, and lying on the ground is the body of a boy – grotesquely ripped apart. Who was he? And what really happened to him? A team of award-winning investigative journalists, including ENDS Report’s Tess Colley and Pippa Neill, set out to find out. Listen to all three episodes here: https://www.endsreport.com/article/1932516/listen-boy-wasted-bale-plastic-mystery-body-global-investigation ...or wherever you find your podcasts.

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• Speaking up About Plastic Pollution in Turkey, from Biology to Waste Trade

  In this episode we’ll travel to Turkey with Sedat Gündogdu. Sedat is a Turkish marine biologist and works as a professor at Cukurova University in Adana. When Sedat realized how much plastic trash was polluting the water and land around him, he started to research both its origins and impacts. He began to understand the downsides of microplastics, waste trade, and recycling, and started to talk openly about it. At the plastics treaty negotiations, Anja and Sedat met up to chat about what it means to be a scientist and activist, the scare tactics he experienced and how he fought them off, the waste exports Turkey receives from European countries, and what’s needed to make change. Listen to Boy Wasted as well: https://www.endsreport.com/article/1932516/listen-boy-wasted-bale-plastic-mystery-body-global-investigation

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• Plastic Chemicals - A Toxic Relationship and How We Can Start Fixing It

  In this episode, we’re taking a deep dive into plastic chemicals and their impacts on human and environmental health. You’ll learn why it’s not such a great idea to put plastic containers into your dishwasher, and why fatty food is especially prone to absorbing chemicals from food packaging. We’re also discussing a common and mostly misunderstood mantra of toxicology, the claim that it’s always the dose that makes the poison. Well, it turns out, that that’s not always true. We’re looking at how some chemicals in plastics can hack our hormone systems, how the political regulation of chemicals is not sufficient, and what we can do about it. In short, we’re taking a look at our toxic relationship with plastics and chemicals, why it affects some people more thana others, and how we can start fixing it. My guests are Martin Wagner, Professor of Biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU, and Jane Muncke,  Managing Director and Chief Scientific Officer at the Food Packaging Forum. We met on the sidelines of the plastics treaty negotiations in Geneva a month ago. Martin Wagner: https://www.ntnu.edu/employees/martin.wagner Jane Muncke: https://foodpackagingforum.org/about-us/office/jane-muncke PlastChem report: https://plastchem-project.org/ The Lancet Countdown on Health and Plastics: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01447-3/abstract The Scientists Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty: https://ikhapp.org/scientist-about-us/

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