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.
Plastisphere: A podcast on plastic pollution in the environment
28 minutes 11 seconds
3 months ago
The Youth Movement at the Plastics Treaty Talks
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 us we had set up an alarm by sitting on the ground under the tree, because of "the cables" underneath :) If you're in Geneva: Fast forward all the way to the last ten minutes to get some tips for the morning of August 12, 2025, which is International Youth Day.
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.
