Early Heroines of Plastic Pollution: Meet the Women who Started the Beach Cleanups (Part II - Linda)
In this episode, we’re going to head out to the beach for the 40th International Coastal Cleanup Day. It’s a huge event which has been taking place each third Saturday of September for four decades now. Each year that day, hundreds of thousands of people swarm to the shorelines and collect and remove the trash they find. But beyond just cleaning up, International Coastal Cleanup Day is an important part of the science and politics of plastics. But how did it all begin? In this second of a two-episode story, you’ll get to hear the little-known stories of the women who started the beach cleanups in the 1980s. These early activists did not only mobilise citizens to put a global spotlight on plastic pollution. They were also the first to count and classify the trash, which produced invaluable data to better understand the growing environmental issue plastics posed. And right from the beginning, beach cleanups drew the interest of the plastics and packaging industries. We’ll explore this history in more detail with Elsa Devienne. Elsa is an assistant professor in US history at Northumbria University in the UK, and she’s the one who dug up this story.
Start with part one of the story here: https://soundcloud.com/plastisphere-podcast/coastal-cleanup-judie
Based on Elsa's paper: Making Plastics Count: Citizen Science Beach Cleanups and the Ocean Plastic Pollution Crisis (1980s–2020s) https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/737351?journalCode=eh
Contact her for a free copy: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/d/elsa-devienne/
This episode was supported by a British Academy Leverhulme Small Grant and co-produced by Elsa Devienne and Anja Krieger. All recordings with Judie, Linda and Susan by Elsa. Music is by Dorian Roy, and cover art by Maren von Stockhausen.
--------
32:26
--------
32:26
Early Heroines of Plastic Pollution: Meet the Women who Started the Beach Cleanups (Part I - Judie)
In this episode, we’re going to head out to the beach for the 40th International Coastal Cleanup Day. It’s a huge event which has been taking place each third Saturday of September for four decades now. Each year that day, hundreds of thousands of people swarm to the shorelines and collect and remove the trash they find. But beyond just cleaning up, International Coastal Cleanup Day is an important part of the science and politics of plastics. But how did it all begin? In the next two episodes, you’ll get to hear the little-known stories of the women who started the beach cleanups in the 1980s. These early activists did not only mobilise citizens to put a global spotlight on plastic pollution. They were also the first to count and classify the trash, which produced invaluable data to better understand the growing environmental issue plastics posed. And right from the beginning, beach cleanups drew the interest of the plastics and packaging industries. We’ll explore this history in more detail with Elsa Devienne. Elsa is an assistant professor in US history at Northumbria University in the UK, and she’s the one who dug up this story.
Find part two of the story here: https://soundcloud.com/plastisphere-podcast/coastal-cleanup-linda
Link to the 1984 video "Get the Drift and Bag it": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEesPuZxCes
Elsa's paper: Making Plastics Count: Citizen Science Beach Cleanups and the Ocean Plastic Pollution Crisis (1980s–2020s) https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/737351?journalCode=eh
Contact her for a free copy: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/d/elsa-devienne/
This episode was supported by a British Academy Leverhulme Small Grant and co-produced by Elsa Devienne and Anja Krieger. All recordings with Judie by Elsa. Music is by Dorian Roy, and cover art by Maren von Stockhausen.
--------
34:06
--------
34:06
How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - What really happened in Geneva?
After 11 days of talks between 180 nations in the middle of a heatwave, the final session dragged late into the night. The next morning we learned that the plastics treaty talks had - again - ended without an agreement to tackle plastic pollution. So after recovering from this intense week, Anja got in touch with Alexandra Harrington. Alexandra is an expert in law and she wears many hats: She’s the Chair of the Plastic Pollution Task Force at the World Commission on Environmental Law of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a Visiting Scholar at McGill University, and a member of the Plastic Treaty Legal Drafting Group. In this episode, they review what really happened in Geneva. And Alexandra has a hopeful message: Don't give up yet on the plastics treaty.
Theme: Dorian Roy
Music: Blue Dot Sessions sessions.blue
- Plasticity https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/336059
- The Pewter Elephant https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/335775
- Lush Arborio https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/335777
- Blue Latex https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/336061
Sound of protests from GAIA global alliance for incinerator alternatives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMncIHaNdmg
Plenary recordings from the UNEP webcast https://www.youtube.com/@UNEP/streams
--------
23:25
--------
23:25
How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Update from Geneva (INC 5.2.) with Neil Tangri
How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Update from Geneva (INC 5.2.) with Neil Tangri by Anja Krieger
--------
8:20
--------
8:20
The Youth Movement at the Plastics Treaty Talks
Dejea Lyons and Shellan Saling from the Youth Plastic Action Network leave no doubt: To save the Plastics Treaty process and get to a meaningful agreement, serious sh*** needs to happen! Listen to Shellan's statement at the opening plenary and our chat under a tree in front of the United Nations Headquarter in Geneva, Switzerland. Thanks to the security guard who kindly let us sit and record there before he came over and informed us we had set up an alarm by sitting on the ground under the tree, because of "the cables" underneath :) If you're in Geneva: Fast forward all the way to the last ten minutes to get some tips for the morning of August 12, 2025, which is International Youth Day.
Sobre Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment
The podcast on plastic, people, and the planet by @anjakrieger. Plastics have become the basis for our modern lives, but they also pollute the planet. Will we be able to develop a healthy relationship with these materials we’ve created? Follow Anja on a journey into the world of synthetic polymers, their impacts on nature and ourselves, and the global quest to tackle plastic pollution. Her episodes feature a diverse set of voices and viewpoints and explore the issue from many different angles.
Ouça Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment, Ciência Sem Fim e muitos outros podcasts de todo o mundo com o aplicativo o radio.net
Brasil