Is it Time to Ban the Plastic Bottle?

Conflict in the Middle East continues to disrupt global shipping routes including the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca. China is now turning to Russia for support in developing an alternative trade path: the Northern Sea Route. On 15 August, China sent its first ship on ...  Show more

Just under 20 years ago Kenya pioneered the use of mobile money. Since then, other countries in Africa have carved out a share of the digital market for themselves, from gaming in Morocco to artificial intelligence in Tunisia. But the picture is not the same across the whole cont ...  Show more

Just ahead of Zero Waste Day, this episode of The Weekly Tradecast talks trash with UNCTAD economist Henrique Silva Pacini Costa. From plastic packaging to fast fashion to car batteries, we have been creating mountains of waste for decades. It’s everywhere – in landfills, in the ...  Show more

These days plastics contribute to 300 million metric tons of waste in the world. In the early 2000s, our plastic waste rose more in a single decade than it had in 40 years. But what if there was a way to intercept that plastic before it enters our oceans? Talib talked with Lonely ...  Show more

Since the advent of single-use plastics, we’ve become awash in waste. Barrels of petroleum are extracted, turned into plastics that contain products, which are then opened and the containers thrown away. It’s a bonehead process start to finish.See omnystudio.com/listener for priv ...  Show more

Guardian Seascapes reporter Karen McVeigh tells Madeleine Finlay about a recent trip to the Galápagos Islands, where mounds of plastic waste are washing up and causing problems for endemic species. Tackling this kind of waste and the overproduction of plastic were the topics on t ...  Show more