Plastisphere

Transcript

Theme Music – Pling by Dorian Roy

Nirere Sadrach
Among the consequences of this growing plastic pollution crisis is the issue of waste colonialism. It has been now confirmed that countries in the global North are making the global South their dumping ground by exporting their waste.

Sharifah Norkhadijah Syed Ismail
And in certain countries, like Malaysia, most of this plastic being burning, illegally burning – it can create hazardous gases that can affect the humans or the populations nearby to the facilities. And also this plastic has been dumped carelessly on land or in the rivers or the oceans. Even though we think that we may be really recycle the plastic, but we are not really sure whether they’ve been treated efficiently or not.

Anja Krieger
Welcome to the #PlasticsTreaty Shorts on Plastisphere. My name is Anja Krieger. For a long time, we treated disposable plastic and waste as if there was an “away” – a place, where we could safely dispose of our trash. But as we all know, nothing disappears just magically. Each year, the world produces over two billion tons of waste, and hundreds of millions tons of that are plastic. There is no away, and all this stuff goes somewhere – to landfills, dumps, incinerators, recycling facilities, or into the environment. But our plastic products don’t always end up close to where they are used. Waste is traded globally, and especially the hard-to-recycle plastics are shipped to places abroad. Often, there’s not enough infrastructure to deal with this waste plastic in a safe way. So it is openly dumped, recycled without protecting the workers’ health, or lost to the environment – with impacts for the local people and ecosystems. Today, I want to share two messages with you. The first by Nirere Sadrach from Uganda, and the second from Sharifa Ismail from Malaysia. Nirere is an activist with End Plastic Pollution, an NGO in Uganda. He calls for plastic pollution to be addressed at a global level – but treated within the borders of each country.
Continue reading “#PlasticsTreaty Shorts: Waste Colonialism with Nirere Sadrach and Sharifa Ismail”

Theme Music – Pling by Dorian Roy

Andrés Del Castillo
We believe that there are different types of upstream measures that will be necessary to end plastic pollution, from regulating fossil-fuel subsidies to transparency of data on plastic production. But there are three measures that are getting more attention. And the first one is the overall cap on the production of plastics, a second will be a phase-out and restrictions on specific polymers and chemicals of concern – and finally, a moratorium.

Anja Krieger
Welcome to Plastisphere, the podcast on plastics, people, and the planet, with the #PlasticsTreaty Shorts. I’m Anja Krieger, and today, you’ll hear a message from Andrés Del Castillo. Andrés is a Senior Attorney from Columbia working with CIEL, the Center for International Environmental Law in Switzerland. CIEL is a non-governmental organization that has long pointed out the broader implications of plastic pollution. They have published reports on the connection between plastics and climate change, on plastics and human health, and between plastics and the petrochemical industry and fracking. As you probably know, most plastics are still made from fossil fuels. Gas, oil and coal can be turned into precursors like ethylene, propylene or butadiene and then made into different kinds of plastic polymers. Andrés says that we need to regulate these building blocks, just like the plastics and chemicals they are turned into. But we don’t need to wait for the global community to agree on production caps. There’s another way to halt the growth in production. Hear more from Andrés.
Continue reading “#PlasticsTreaty Shorts: Production Caps and Moratoriums with Andrés Del Castillo”

Transcript

Theme Music – Pling by Dorian Roy

Bethanie Carney Almroth
We are producing chemicals and plastics mostly from fossil fuels, at ever increasing rates, and we already see disruption of Earth’s systems. We see that plastics are connected to human health impacts. We see that plastics are connected to climate changes. We see that plastics are exacerbating impacts in other sectors on the planet. So this big pulled out overview of the effects of plastics on the planet gives us even more evidence to drive the kind of treaty negotiation that we really need to see where we’re taking ambitious goals and we’re having a global effort to really address this global problem.

Anja Krieger
Welcome to Plastisphere, the podcast on plastics, people, and the planet. My name is Anja Krieger. On the way to a global plastics treaty, I bring you this series of short messages from experts around the world. Today’s reflections come from Bethanie Carney Almroth, a professor of ecotoxicology and environmental sciences at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Bethanie is a plastic pollution researcher and one of the scientists’ who researched plastics within the planetary boundaries. She and her colleagues found that the planetary boundary for so-called novel entities, including plastics and chemicals, has been surpassed. We are producing so many new materials and substances that we have left the safe operating space for the future of humanity. That’s why Bethanie really wants to see the plastics treaty negotiations focus on both – plastics and chemicals. Here’s Bethanie:
Continue reading “#PlasticsTreaty Shorts: The Planetary Boundary with Bethanie Carney Almroth”