Author: Anja Krieger

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Transcript: The early heroines of plastic pollution, part 1: Judie

Narrator (1984 doc)
This is Dee River, just south of Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast. The first storm of the season just rolled in the night before, and volunteers up and down the coast are facing gale winds and high seas as they begin their search for the plastic debris.

Anja Krieger
Welcome to Plastisphere, the podcast on plastics, people and the planet. My name is Anja Kriger. In this episode, we’re going to head out to the beach for 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 mobilize 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. They got entangled in the blame game between society and industry. 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. Continue reading “Transcript: The early heroines of plastic pollution, part 1: Judie”

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Meet the women who started the citizen science beach cleanups

In this two-part story, we’re exploring the history of International Coastal Cleanup Day. It’s a huge event which has been taking place in 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? We share the little-known stories of the women who started this practice in the 1980s, mobilising citizens to put a global spotlight on plastic pollution, counting and classifying the trash, to produce invaluable data. And right from the beginning, the plastics and packaging industries were involved. Elsa Devienne, assistant professor in US history at Northumbria University in the UK, is the one who dug up this story. This episode was supported by a British Academy Leverhulme Small Grant.

  • Read the transcripts for part 1 – part 2 coming soon
  • Link to the 1984 video “Get the Drift and Bag it”
  • Elsa’s paper: Making Plastics Count: Citizen Science Beach Cleanups and the Ocean Plastic Pollution Crisis (1980s–2020s)

    • Contact for a free copy

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    Final round of plastics negotiations kick off in Korea

    Report for Deutschlandfunk

    In a week’s time, the world wants to agree on a global plastics treaty. At least that is the hope of many of the 3,800 participants in the fifth and final round of negotiations currently taking place in South Korea. In addition to diplomats and observers from civil society and business, many scientists are also taking part. What makes them go on the long journey? Plastisphere host Anja Krieger spoke to a participant from Germany for German national public radio. Continue reading “Final round of plastics negotiations kick off in Korea”

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    Forever Chemicals (Teaser)

    Hey There, it’s Anja. I just wanted to wish you a Happy World Environment Day! And I’ve got a treat for you. There’s a new podcast series I’ve been listening to the past weeks, that is really great – and I 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. Here’s a little teaser:

    Transcript Continue reading “Forever Chemicals (Teaser)”

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    Plastic Money – Turning Off the Subsidies Tap


    In March 2024, negotiators and experts came together in Bellagio, Italy, for an exclusive meeting to discuss an essential topic: Plastic money. And we’re not talking about credit cards here, but the actual money we people around the world are paying for the production of plastics through our governments’ subsidies. I met with the organizers of the meeting, Ronald Steenblik of the Quaker United Nations Office QUNO and his colleague Andrés Naranjo, and Alexandra Harrington from Lancaster University Law School. She also chairs the Plastic Pollution Task Force of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law. Learn more from them about plastic subsidies in this episode!

    Transcript Continue reading “Plastic Money – Turning Off the Subsidies Tap”

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    Transcript: How (not) to Make a Plastics Treaty – Part II: Drama and Delay

    This is the second of three parts of the conversation. We take you back into each meeting of the treaty negotiations – INC-1 in Uruguay, INC-2 in France and INC-3 in Kenya. We’ll talk diplomacy and give you a better understanding of what’s going on on the international stage.

    Transcript
    Continue reading “Transcript: How (not) to Make a Plastics Treaty – Part II: Drama and Delay”

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    Transcript: How (Not) to Make a Plastics Treaty – Part I: Ambition in a Bracket

    This is the first of three parts of the conversation. We take you back into each meeting of the treaty negotiations – INC-1 in Uruguay, INC-2 in France and INC-3 in Kenya. We’ll talk diplomacy and give you a better understanding of what’s going on on the international stage.


    Continue reading “Transcript: How (Not) to Make a Plastics Treaty – Part I: Ambition in a Bracket”