Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment

---Guest episode by Environmental Investigation Agency's "What on Earth?" podcast series---

The fifth round of talks in pursuit of a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty kicks off in Busan, South Korea shortly – but will we emerge with an agreement capable of tackling the world’s plastic crisis or will vested interests compromise the final vision? In this excellent episode, of the "What on Earth" podcast, EIA Ocean Campaign Leader Christina Dixon and Ocean Campaigner Jacob Kean-Hammerson join Senior Press & Communications Officer Paul Newman for an update on the progress so far and a look ahead to the challenges remaining for negotiators in Busan.

Published: 19 Nov 2024

Subscribe and listen to more "What on Earth?" episodes: https://eia-international.org/podcast/

---Repost of the 2020 episode, originally titled "The Discovery of Plastic Pollution"---

As we head into the final round of negotiations towards a global plastics treaty, it's important to remember how long it took for the international community to get here. While plastic pollution has only risen to attention in the past few years, the problem really isn’t all that new. Some scientists have been aware of plastic in the ocean for over half a century. So, how was plastic pollution first discovered? And why didn’t we hear about it earlier? For this 2020 episode, Anja took a deep dive into the history of science, and spoke to the scientists who called attention to the problem long before it was widely discussed. What happened back then, and how did we get to where we are now? Ed Carpenter, Steve Rothstein, Elizabeth Venrick, Arne Holmström, Hans van Weenen and Peter Ryan share their stories.

Share the LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/meet-scientists-who-discovered-plastic-pollution-over-50-6kw5e/

Transcript and credits: https://anjakrieger.com/plastisphere/2020/07/17/ep-9-transcript/

Elena Berg is an environmental scientist and water sommelier. Her series „Something in the Water“ is a ten-part podcast mini-series on the fine water industry. As part of it, Elena addresses the elephant in the room: Plastic pollution. How much plastic is there in our drinking water? What’s the difference between tap and bottled water? And how concerned do we need to be? Elena and her guests, the anti-plastic activist Malia Elder and researcher Dr. Sherri Mason, will provide you with a lot of food for thought on social and environmental justice as well. If you’re familiar with the debate around plastic pollution and would like to go straight to the part on drinking water, you can skip the first fifteen minutes. However, the introduction is also really insightful, especially the part on closing the tap (the plastic tap, not the water tap).

If you liked this guest episode, check out the other episodes: www.pineforestpods.com/pods/something-in-the-water

The series is produced by Clark Marchese of Pine Forest Media, who recently started his own Plastic Podcast - very much worth checking out as well:

www.pineforestpods.com/pods/plastic-podcast

Thanks to Clark and Elena for sharing the episode and to their guests for their insights!

On the way to the final round of negotiations towards the global plastics treaty, things are moving fast. And there's a major development on the road to Busan, something that could change everything. Ambassador Luis Vayas, the chair of the intergovernmental negotiating committee, made a move that could help the treaty text break free from all the brackets to get the process back on track. Magnus Løvold from the Norwegian Academy of International Law just published the details on his blog, Points of Order. And one of his first readers was Rebecca Altman, an environmental sociologist from the US who's currently writing her first book on plastics. We agreed that this is too insightful not to share it with you. So Rebecca went into the studio at Brown University and recorded the audio version of Magnus' blog post for us.

This podcast is produced in the spirit of the gift economy. If you enjoy listening please support the production on https://anjakrieger.com/plastisphere/support/

Find Magnus' written blog post "a basic proposal" here: https://medium.com/points-of-order/a-basic-proposal-ad5e455c3480

Read Rebecca's writing on plastics: https://rebecca-altman.com/home

Thanks to Katie Silberman at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society for helping us record the episode - and to Dorian Roy for the music. The studio recording is by Ray Mandel-Mueller, made possible through programming by the Brown Arts Institute. Thanks for the great sound, Ray!

The final meeting to negotiate the global plastics treaty is coming up this winter. But if you’ve listened to previous episodes of our series, you know that little progress had been made in the first three INCs. At the negotiations in Uruguay, France, and Kenya, strategic games were played. They held up the process and sabotaged the road to an ambitious and binding treaty.

Now, in the run-up to the final round of negotiations in November and December in the city of Busan, in Korea - the INC-5 - we’re taking a closer look at what happened last in Ottawa. And who else could explain the INC-4 better than Magnus Løvold? He’s an expert in international treaties from the Norwegian Academy of International Law, and has attended all the meetings in person.

+++If you enjoy this series, please support the production! Go to https://anjakrieger.com/plastisphere/support/ to find out more.+++

In this episode, we are discussing clips from the live-stream of the previous meeting. You’ll get to hear from Jyoti Mathur-Filipp (Executive Secretary of the Negotiating Committee), Luis Vayas Valdivieso (INC Chair), Inger Andersen (Executive Director of UNEP), a representative of the BreakFreeFromPlastic Youth, Janelle Nahmabin (Society of Native Nations), Patrick Umuhoza (representative of Rwanda), and the Representative of Fiji.

For more insights on Ottawa, go to the Indisposable Podcast and listen to Jamala Djinn, Policy Advisor for Break Free From Plastic, and Rachel Radvany, Environmental Health Campaigner for the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL):

https://upstreamsolutions.org/podcast/toward-a-global-plastics-treaty

September 5, 2024, is Plastic Overshoot Day. The world has been able to handle its plastic waste until this day, but the waste produced the rest of the year statistically ends up as pollution. Imagine the huge pile of plastic packaging and other stuff that the world disposes of in just four months - that will end up in the environment, according to this calculation. Sarah Perreard of Earth Action, the NGO that calculates the Plastic Overshoot day, explains how she and her colleagues arrived at this date, whether waste management is improving or not, and what that means for the global treaty to tackle plastic pollution.

Listen to our 2023 episode with Sarah as well: "What Day is Plastic Overshoot"? https://anjakrieger.com/plastisphere/2023/07/09/plastic-overshoot-day/

Visit the Plastic Overshoot Day website and find out more about each country: https://plasticovershoot.earth/

Happy World Environment Day! We’ve got a treat for you. There’s a new podcast series which is really great – and we wanted to share it with you. It’s called Forever Chemicals, and it’s produced by Meg Carney and team at Black-Footed Ferret Productions. Listen to the teaser here on Plastisphere and then head over to https://www.theoutdoorminimalist.com/forever-chemicals to binge the whole series!

Transcript: https://anjakrieger.com/plastisphere/2024/06/05/forever-chemicals-teaser/

Voices in the teaser (in order of appearance):

- Stefan Posner, Textile and Polymer Chemist

- Arlene Blum, founder of the Green Science Policy Institute

- James Pollock, PFAS Lawyer

- Mike Schade, Toxic Free Future

- Alex Lauver, Outdoor Research

- Matt Eshed, Research Fellow

- Ammi Borenstein, Snaplinc Consulting

- Philippe Granjean, Environmental Epidemiologist

Sirine Rached is the Global Plastics Policy Coordinator at GAIA, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. In her message, Sirine shares why she doesn’t believe in certain technologies that are currently promoted to solve the plastics crisis.

Read more on GAIA’s positions in the PlasticsTreaty talks here:  no-burn.org/unea-plastics-treaty

Send me a voice message - it might be published! Follow the instructions here:

https://anjakrieger.com/plastisphere/send-a-voice-message/

The penultimate session to negotiate the global plastics treaty ended just a few days ago in Ottawa, Canada. One of the journalists attending was Stephen Leahy, a science and environmental journalist who’s reported on climate and other issues for the past 30 years. Steve has written for dozens of publications including National Geographic, the Guardian, New Scientist and The Atlantic. Anja asked him about his impressions of this fourth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, the INC4. Hear more in Steve's audio message.

You can follow Steve’s reporting via his substack page leahy.substack.com

To send a voice message follow the instructions here: https://anjakrieger.com/plastisphere/send-a-voice-message/

It's Monday, April 29, 2024, and the INC4, the fourth round of negotiations for the plastics treaty, is in the final hours. Negotiators of countries from around the world are sitting in conference rooms in Ottawa, Canada, debating how to end plastic pollution. Around them, the presence of the fossil and chemical industries has grown significantly. Compared to the last meeting in Nairobi 37 percent more lobbyists are attending. The effort to quantify this lobby presence was led by CIEL, the Center for International Environmental Law. In a press conference that Plastisphere is sharing with this episode, the NGO brought together speakers from Greenpeace, the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, and the Indigenous Peoples Caucus. It’s a very impressive hour. For context, one of the First Nations in Canada just had to declare a state of emergency: A plastics plant in their vicinity had released chemicals into their environment. This is just one of the incidents that points to the burden frontline communities living close to production and disposal facilities are carrying around the world. So environmental justice is a huge issue when it comes to plastic pollution.

Hear more from the panel:

- Delphine Levi Alvares, Global Petrochemical Campaign Coordinator at CIEL

- Laura Salgado, Head of Campaign and Partnership at GGTC

- Graham Forbes, Head of Delegation, Greenpeace International

- Yuyun Ismawati, Convenor of the Indonesian Zero Waste Alliance (AZWI)

- Suzanne Smoke, Indigenous Knowledge Keeper from the Indigenous Peoples Caucus

- Bethanie Carney-Almroth, professor in ecotoxicology at Gothenburg University and Member of the Scientists’ Coalition For An Effective Plastic Treaty

CIEL's analysis of lobby attendance at INC4 was carried out in collaboration with Greenpeace, the Break Free From Plastic movement, the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), and the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC).

Here's the link: https://www.ciel.org/news/fossil-fuel-and-chemical-industry-influence-inc4/