Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment

Baldeep Kaur is a doctoral fellow at the University of Potsdam, studying the afterlives of discarded colonial technologies. Last November, they invited Plastisphere creator Anja Krieger to a live listening session at the Minor Cosmopolitan Assembly, an event organized by the research training group with the same name. Together with the audience, Baldeep and Anja listened to and discussed short exc...

A new guest episode to inspire your ears, mind and heart, kindly shared by Upstream. Plastic pollution is not just a waste issue. It starts with production, continues during use, and in the end, a lot of it ends up dumped or in the environment. But the problems plastics cause from production to disposal are not distributed equally. They impact some communities more than others, especially those al...

Remember our episode a few months ago on the history of the plastics treaty? To recap: In March, the United Nations Environmental Assembly decided to negotiate a global agreement to tackle plastic pollution. The ambitious plan is to develop a binding treaty covering the full lifecycle of plastics within the next two years, by 2024. This week, this process is moving forward at an international meet...

We can’t be the only ones responsible for plastic pollution. It’s time for producers and distributors of disposable plastic to take responsibility for where their packaging goes. Plastisphere presents an episode from Sustainable Asia’s “Mapping Asia’s Plastic Crisis” series on producer responsibility and packaging design, featuring experts from Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, hosted and...

Eight years after first flagging plastics as an issue, the United Nations Environment Assembly met in March 2022 for a historic decision. Delegates from more than 170 nations agreed on a mandate to put together a legally binding global plastics treaty within the next two years. Despite some lobbying against it behind the scenes, the draft for a strong resolution prevailed with just a few cuts. The...

Plastisphere is back with Brooke and Anja! For the tenth anniversary of #PlasticFreeJuly, we dive into solutions to plastic pollution. Hear about Anja’s waste audit and DIY projects during the pandemic year, from home-made milk and laundry detergent to fresh pasta. Making stuff from scratch can be fun and empowering, but what’s the impact of these lifestyle changes? Anja’s packaging bin is a bit l...

Take a break from plastics to explore the soil - a hidden world beneath your feet. It's the world of earthworms, springtails, fungi, and bacteria. We hardly ever see these little creatures, but their impacts are huge. Soil stores more carbon than the atmosphere and all plants together, filters water, is pivotal for biodiversity and at the center of agriculture and food security. This winter, Anja...

When it comes to solving the issue of plastic pollution, who would you say is responsible? Is it individuals like you and me, is it the corporations that produce plastics or products made from it, or is it the government with its rules and regulations? That’s the question Brooke Bauman asks in her 4-part podcast series “Guilty Plastics”. Brooke is a student in environmental science at the Universi...

Plastic pollution seems to be a pretty new issue, right? In the past few years, the topic has been all over the media. But if you explore the history of science, it turns out that 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? In this epi...

For this episode, Anja tried something new: She asked listeners, researchers and podcasters to send her audio comments on what is happening now during the coronavirus pandemic. In this episode, you’ll hear some of the messages that arrived in her inbox the past weeks. With input from Justine Ammendolia, Wade Roush, Brooke Bauman, Sedat Gündoğdu, Jacqui Kidman, Susanne Brander, Rebecca Altman, Sydn...

What happens if bioplastics end up in the environment? In this episode, Anja takes a closer look at synthetic polymers marketed as more environmentally friendly. Can they contribute to a healthier planet, and in what way? Anja talks to Frederik Wurm, a chemist developing biodegradable plastics, Constance Ißbrücker of the industry association European Bioplastics, Zero Waste expert Enzo Favoino, ma...

Plastic pollution also affects the soil, the thin layer of ground that feeds all of us. For a long time, this terrestrial plastic has been overlooked. Now scientists are starting to investigate the extent and impacts of plastic pollution in the soil and in the ground. What do we know about them? In this episode, Anja talks to artist Saša Spačal from Slovenia, soil biologist Matthias Rillig from Ge...

Chris Jordan has taken some of the most iconic pictures to shape our image of plastic pollution. He traveled to Midway Island on his quest to photograph the evasive "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", which is really a soup of microplastics. There, he documented albatross chicks who had died with their guts full of plastic. His images went viral, but they also haunted him so much that he decided to ret...

Plastic pollution might be the most visible environmental issue we face today. But there are other kinds of pollution, and they are far harder to see. One of the most dangerous is the huge amount of greenhouse gases that we emit into the atmosphere. In this episode, Anja explores the connections between plastic pollution and climate change. She talks to ocean expert and publisher Nikolaus Gelpke,...

In this episode, Anja calls up Dr. Jenna Jambeck and Amy Brooks from the University of Georgia on a research trip in Vietnam to learn about their research on waste management and plastic pollution. In many Asian countries, a booming economy is coupled with more and more people using throw-away items. Informal recyclers and waste pickers who have traditionally sorted the waste cannot keep up. But,...

Anja goes on a lab tour with Alexandra ter Halle from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse. The chemist and her team were the first to detect nanoplastic in the open ocean - plastic so small that it is comparable in size to a virus. What do we know about these very tiny pieces, and how do researchers try to detect and understand them? The Plastisphere is a research and interview podcast by German...

In this introduction to the Plastisphere podcast, Anja takes the listener on a journey back in time, from a remote plastic beach on the Big Island of Hawaii to the factory of a big chemical producer making bioplastics. She shares what she has learned about the issue of plastic pollution in the past years. The Plastisphere is an interview and research podcast by German freelance journalist Anja Kri...