Mark Leon Goldberg interviews Andres del Castillo
By now we have all seen images of plastic garbage patches floating in the ocean, beaches and riverbanks swamped with plastic trash, entangled sea-creatures suffocating – but data on the presence of plastics in soils and air are new – Discarded plastics break down into microplastics less that 5 mm in length – and they degrade further into nano-plastics that can only be seen under a microscope.
There are now microplastics found in human lungs and blood and placentas; and the latest scientific studies show that babies are drinking microplastics in their mothers’ milk.
Here is a report from the first meeting to control plastic held in Uruguay in December 2022. 160 of the 192 UN member states attended.
Andres del Castillo attended the first round of negotiations for a new Global Treaty on Plastics, formally kicked off in early December 2022 in Uruguay. He is a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law.
Mark Leon Goldberg is the producer of Global Dispatches, a podcast for foreign policy and Global development. He is the editor of the United Nations and global affairs blog UN Dispatch and host of the Global Dispatch Podcast.
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