Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment
Anja Krieger
64 episodes
1 week ago
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 climate change. But there’s a lot of criticism of the idea of offsetting plastics or greenhouse gases this way. Are these credits really doing what they claim to do?
In this episode we’re going to hear a story from Kenya, and more specifically, Dandora. Dandora is a neighborhood in Nairobi and the home of Kenya’s biggest dumpside - an open field with mountains of trash and waste. It’s the workplace of Dandora’s waste pickers, the people making a living from collecting anything valuable they find on the dumpsite. These waste pickers doing a hard and dangerous job, and face a lot of competition. They compete with the big machines that move the trash around, their fellow waste workers, and now, they are also competing with a new concept: Plastic credits.
I learned more about this on the sidelines of the plastic treaty talks in Geneva this summer, where I met Benard Ogembo from Kenya and Conor McGlone from the UK, the two journalists who investigated the connection between plastic credits and the Dandora dumpsite. We were later joined by Arpita Baghat, the plastic policy lead of GAIA Asia Pacific, an organization with deep insights into the situation of waste pickers.
Read Benard's and Conor's story on Desmog: https://www.desmog.com/2025/08/05/new-global-market-for-plastic-credits-threatens-livelihoods-at-kenyan-dump/
Read the GAIA Smoke & Mirrors report: https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/NOV-29-2023_Smoke-and-Mirrors-the-Realities-of-Plastic-Credits-and-Offsetting.pdf
Original sounds from the Dandora dumpsite in Anja's intro by James Wakibia. Intro in Dholuo by Benard Ogembo.
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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 climate change. But there’s a lot of criticism of the idea of offsetting plastics or greenhouse gases this way. Are these credits really doing what they claim to do?
In this episode we’re going to hear a story from Kenya, and more specifically, Dandora. Dandora is a neighborhood in Nairobi and the home of Kenya’s biggest dumpside - an open field with mountains of trash and waste. It’s the workplace of Dandora’s waste pickers, the people making a living from collecting anything valuable they find on the dumpsite. These waste pickers doing a hard and dangerous job, and face a lot of competition. They compete with the big machines that move the trash around, their fellow waste workers, and now, they are also competing with a new concept: Plastic credits.
I learned more about this on the sidelines of the plastic treaty talks in Geneva this summer, where I met Benard Ogembo from Kenya and Conor McGlone from the UK, the two journalists who investigated the connection between plastic credits and the Dandora dumpsite. We were later joined by Arpita Baghat, the plastic policy lead of GAIA Asia Pacific, an organization with deep insights into the situation of waste pickers.
Read Benard's and Conor's story on Desmog: https://www.desmog.com/2025/08/05/new-global-market-for-plastic-credits-threatens-livelihoods-at-kenyan-dump/
Read the GAIA Smoke & Mirrors report: https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/NOV-29-2023_Smoke-and-Mirrors-the-Realities-of-Plastic-Credits-and-Offsetting.pdf
Original sounds from the Dandora dumpsite in Anja's intro by James Wakibia. Intro in Dholuo by Benard Ogembo.
How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Nothing is Agreed Until Everything is Agreed
Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment
57 minutes 3 seconds
6 months ago
How [Not] to Make a Plastics Treaty - Nothing is Agreed Until Everything is Agreed
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 NAIL, the Norwegian Academy of International Law, Chris Dixon from EIA, the Environmental Investigation Agency, and Andrés Del Castillo from CIEL, the Center for International Environmental Law.
Oh, and for the first time, there's an extra little track at the end of the episode. Don't miss it, it's lovely! And a call for support: To travel and stay in Geneva for two weeks will be super expensive. So please help me (Anja, host of this pod) get there if you can. Every contribution helps, no matter how small. You’ll help me continue my work: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/plastispherepod
Credits: Thanks to Dorian Roy for the theme, Blue Dot Session for additional music, Maren von Stockhausen for the cover art, and the UNEP team for allowing me to use the excerpts from the conference videos.
Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment
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 climate change. But there’s a lot of criticism of the idea of offsetting plastics or greenhouse gases this way. Are these credits really doing what they claim to do?
In this episode we’re going to hear a story from Kenya, and more specifically, Dandora. Dandora is a neighborhood in Nairobi and the home of Kenya’s biggest dumpside - an open field with mountains of trash and waste. It’s the workplace of Dandora’s waste pickers, the people making a living from collecting anything valuable they find on the dumpsite. These waste pickers doing a hard and dangerous job, and face a lot of competition. They compete with the big machines that move the trash around, their fellow waste workers, and now, they are also competing with a new concept: Plastic credits.
I learned more about this on the sidelines of the plastic treaty talks in Geneva this summer, where I met Benard Ogembo from Kenya and Conor McGlone from the UK, the two journalists who investigated the connection between plastic credits and the Dandora dumpsite. We were later joined by Arpita Baghat, the plastic policy lead of GAIA Asia Pacific, an organization with deep insights into the situation of waste pickers.
Read Benard's and Conor's story on Desmog: https://www.desmog.com/2025/08/05/new-global-market-for-plastic-credits-threatens-livelihoods-at-kenyan-dump/
Read the GAIA Smoke & Mirrors report: https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/NOV-29-2023_Smoke-and-Mirrors-the-Realities-of-Plastic-Credits-and-Offsetting.pdf
Original sounds from the Dandora dumpsite in Anja's intro by James Wakibia. Intro in Dholuo by Benard Ogembo.
