88. That’s rubbish: How our waste is choking the planet and how we can clean it up

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 air, in plants and animals and in our oceans – and it can take decades or even centuries to degrade.   

We’ve recycled just nine percent of the plastic we started making 70 years ago, so that’s not going to solve the problem.   

Tune in to UNCTAD’s Henrique Silva Pacini Costa to find out what we must do to reduce our rubbish and why we must do it quickly.