Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment

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. The feed contains only newer episodes. You can find the links to all episodes published 2018 through 2024 via the podcast website.

Episodes

How [Not] To Make A Plastics Treaty - The Mysterious Midnight Meeting

February 23, 2026 • 36 mins
It's 2026, and we still don't have a plastics treaty. Will we get one, what kind, and when? All of that is up in the air at this point. And after the failed round of negotiations last summer in Geneva, some strange insights emerged: During the last night, a mysterious midnight meeting took place, seemingly to take down the Chair, the person running the negotiation process between states. And - coincidence or not - later in the fall...
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Tackling Plastic Production: Why and How to Do It

December 2, 2025 • 30 mins
It's the elephant in the room: The growth of plastic production and how that contributes to pollution. In this episode, we're taking a look at why it's important to not only tackle the waste plastic causes, but also the source of the issue itself. Anja discusses this with Melanie Bergmann, a marine biologist at Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and a plastic pollution researcher for more than ...
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Reuse, Reuse, Reuse! How a Tradititional Concept Can Help Reduce Plastic Waste

November 26, 2025 • 26 mins
You’ve probably heard the mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle. And oftentimes, it’s that last word, recycle, that we think of when looking to solve plastic pollution. But the order of that mantra has a deeper meaning, it’s a hierachy, sorted by priorities. So to reduce the waste we produce, the first and best way is to reduce what we use. If that’s not possible, the second best option is to reuse, to repair, or...
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Beyond Recycling - The Many Meanings of the Circular Economy

November 18, 2025 • 19 mins
When we speak about plastic pollution, a central idea to solve it is that of the circular economy. And when this idea of circularity is mentioned, recycling is often the first thing that comes to mind. But recycling is just one of the elements in the toolbox towards a circular society, and not necessarily the most preferable one. A few months ago, I had the chance to chat about this with Arturo Castillo, an assistant professor in c...
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Guilt-free plastics? The idea of plastic credits and its realities

November 7, 2025 • 31 mins
Wouldn’t it be great to have something like guilt-free plastics? A plastic product you can just buy without worrying that you are contributing to pollution in the environment? That’s the promise of plastic credits. The idea is that if you do have to buy a plastic product, this amount of plastic is being offset or saved from the environment somewhere else. This is similar to the concept of carbon credits to tackle clima...
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Teaser - BOY WASTED: A bale of plastic. A mystery body. A global investigation

October 3, 2025 • 2 mins
+++Podcast recommendation+++ There’s a concrete yard with piles of plastic, and lying on the ground is the body of a boy – grotesquely ripped apart. Who was he? And what really happened to him? A team of award-winning investigative journalists, including ENDS Report’s Tess Colley and Pippa Neill, set out to find out. Listen to all three episodes here: https://www.endsreport.com/article/1932516/listen-boy-wasted-b...
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Plastic Pollution in Turkey, from Biology to Waste Trade

September 29, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode we’ll travel to Turkey with Sedat Gündogdu. Sedat is a Turkish marine biologist and works as a professor at Cukurova University in Adana. When Sedat realized how much plastic trash was polluting the water and land around him, he started to research both its origins and impacts. He began to understand the downsides of microplastics, waste trade, and recycling, and started to talk openly about it. At the plastic...
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Plastic Chemicals - A Toxic Relationship and How We Can Start Fixing It

September 24, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode, we’re taking a deep dive into plastic chemicals and their impacts on human and environmental health. You’ll learn why it’s not such a great idea to put plastic containers into your dishwasher, and why fatty food is especially prone to absorbing chemicals from food packaging. We’re also discussing a common and mostly misunderstood mantra of toxicology, the claim that it’s always the dos...
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Early Heroines of Plastic Pollution, Part II: Meet the Women who Started the Beach Cleanups (Linda)

September 18, 2025 • 32 mins
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 a...
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Early Heroines of Plastic Pollution, Part I: Meet the Women who Started the Beach Cleanups (Judie)

September 12, 2025 • 34 mins
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 a...
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How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - What really happened in Geneva?

August 26, 2025 • 23 mins
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 Pollu...
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How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Update from Geneva (INC 5.2.) with Neil Tangri

August 13, 2025 • 8 mins
How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Update from Geneva (INC 5.2.) with Neil Tangri by Anja Krieger
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The Youth Movement at the Plastics Treaty Talks

August 11, 2025 • 28 mins
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 u...
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How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Update from Geneva (INC 5.2) with Magnus Lovold

August 9, 2025 • 20 mins
How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Update from Geneva (INC 5.2) with Magnus Lovold by Anja Krieger
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How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Nothing is Agreed Until Everything is Agreed

May 8, 2025 • 57 mins
When the plastics treaty negotiations in South Korea ended without a result last December, media reports suggested they had failed. But not so fast - the negotiations are far from over, and continue this year. In this episode, you'll get an update on where we stand on the path to a global plan to tackle plastic pollution - and what’s to come. You'll hear from three of the smartest observers of the process: Magnus Lovold from ...
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Plastics in the Media - A Review with Nanoplastics Researcher Denise Mitrano

December 11, 2024 • 30 mins
In recent years, a lot of new research on micro- and nanoplastics has come out. Reporting in the media sounds pretty scary, with nanoplastics found in the human body. What's does the science know for sure at this point, and what is still open and under investigation? Anja speaks with Denise Mitrano, a professor at the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerla...
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Fact-check your assumptions: Become a plastic mythbuster!

December 5, 2024 • 2 mins
The Plastic Mythbusters project is a collaboration between the Helmholtz Centre Hereon and the University of Strathclyde. Try our quiz and learn more in our detailed answers. You can also send us new claims to check or comments on our answers via the feedback form at the end of the quiz. We’d love to hear from you – to tackle the most persistent plastic myths! Links - Quiz: https://hub.hereon.de/portal/apps/experiencebu...
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How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Midnight Update from #INC5 in Busan

December 1, 2024 • 13 mins
How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Midnight Update from #INC5 in Busan by Anja Krieger
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Why production reduction and a fair transition are so important (with GAIA and Grid Arendal)

December 1, 2024 • 28 mins
Why production reduction and a fair transition are so important (with GAIA and Grid Arendal) by Anja Krieger
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Meeting the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty at #INC5

December 1, 2024 • 29 mins
Meeting the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty at #INC5 by Anja Krieger
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