Plastics Unwrapped artwork

Plastics Unwrapped

17 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 8 ratings

Plastics Unwrapped is a podcast series supported by Dow, on the hunt for solutions to some of the biggest questions facing the plastics industry.​

Join host and journalist Maithreyi Seetharaman on her quest for thought-provoking ideas on how to make plastics truly circular. This is a space where the world's leading thinkers and doers from the worlds of technology, policy-making, civil society, academia and business have honest and difficult conversations about the future of sustainability and plastics.

Chemistry Science Nature circular economy plastics sustainability
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Episodes

Turning the Tide in Asia-Pacific

February 20, 2024 13:00 - 37 minutes - 34.7 MB

The Asia Pacific region tends to dominate the rankings and headlines in coverage surrounding global plastic waste. But the pace of innovation and change in plastics production, consumption and waste in the region has been faster than you think, led by China. In this episode Junice Yeo, Executive Director at Eco-Business, discusses the real challenges facing Asia’s disparate countries and investments in policies to address the region’s varying degrees of waste challenges. Thomas Luedi, Senior...

Science and Entrepreneurship

February 13, 2024 13:00 - 38 minutes - 34.8 MB

From compostable fashion developed in the Middle East to simplifying waste into feedstock in Switzerland to reduce fossil fuels in plastics, entrepreneurs David Roubach and Felix Bobbink share their journey of being disrupters in an industry grappling with waste management. But as Dow Global Business Director Christophe Marché explains, scaling disruptive solutions will require incumbent industry leaders to take risks, invest in disrupters and pivot their business models. University of Calif...

Recycling and Beyond Part 2

February 06, 2024 13:00 - 25 minutes - 23.2 MB

In Recycling and Beyond Part 2, Haley Lowry, Global Sustainability Director at Dow, and Jeroen Verhoeven, Vice President of Value Chain Development at Neste, discuss the quiet industry collaborations that are helping companies break out of their silos to achieve their sustainability targets. We explore the potential behind this collaborative approach in rebalancing carbon and circularity challenges the industry is facing and what solutions could comprise disruptive mechanical and advanced re...

Recycling and Beyond Part 1

January 30, 2024 13:00 - 30 minutes - 28.4 MB

In Recycling and Beyond Part 1, we explore the challenges of collecting and sorting plastic waste, and the necessity to build infrastructure while balancing the needs of communities dealing with waste. Featuring global waste management expert, author and technical editor of UNEP’s Global Waste Management Outlook 2, Zoë Lenkiewicz, and Regional Director in Africa for ChildFund International, Chege Ngugi, this episode dives into how children and communities in Africa are at the frontline of pl...

Design Thinking Plastics Part 2

January 23, 2024 13:00 - 26 minutes - 24.2 MB

In part two of our design thinking discussion, we delve into how design can impact a country and a company's climate goals, as up to 80% percent of a product's lifetime emissions are determined by decisions made at the design stage. With guests Rosalie McMillan, Co-founder of Smile Plastics, and Daniella Souza Miranda, Global Marketing Director at Dow, we explore how large and small businesses are implementing design thinking into their core strategies. Host: Maithreyi Seetharaman Show Prod...

Design Thinking Plastics Part 1

January 16, 2024 14:00 - 25 minutes - 23.5 MB

In part one of Design Thinking Plastics, we explore the history of how designers helped plastic become a core part of modern life.  Tony Chambers, Founder of TC & Friends and former editor-in-chief of Wallpaper, delves into how design thinking is reimagining the role of plastics and how designers are pivoting to give a new life to plastics.  From the role of producers and their responsibility to hyper-aware consumers and their perception of plastics, Tony explores how design thinking from th...

Decarbonization and circularity – why they must go hand-in-hand

February 13, 2023 14:37 - 29 minutes - 27.4 MB

A sustainable future requires the creation of a circular economy for plastic, and we must build systems with decarbonisation at the core. In Episode #4 of Plastics Unwrapped, we explored how advanced recycling technologies will play a key role in accelerating a circular economy for plastic. In this episode, we take it a step further and address how this process can help us decarbonise operations. We sat down with Oliver Borek from Mura, a world leader in advanced recycling technology, Virgi...

Is plastic the new coal?

October 26, 2022 16:58 - 37 minutes - 34.2 MB

While the industry agrees that there’s a need to decarbonize plastics, is a comparison to coal fair? In this episode, Dow’s Carolina Gregorio is in discussion with David Carroll of Plastics Europe and David Croft of Reckitt as they explore the journey the plastics industry needs to take to reach net zero emissions, and how the smallest of shifts in consumer behaviour can drastically decrease the amount of virgin plastics needed to make packaging.  Key discussion points: Discussion of the l...

Working with Africa’s Informal Waste Sector

May 25, 2022 17:52 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MB

This episode explores the challenges faced by Africa’s informal waste sector, with a focus on the partnerships helping to improve the continent’s plastics value chain to enable the scaling of advanced recycling solutions. Adwoa Coleman is joined by Vivien Luk, Executive Director of non-profit organization WORK, and Cordie Aziz-Nash, founder of Environment 360, for this thought-provoking discussion. The panel touch on the effects of COVID-19 on plastics processing chains in Africa and describ...

Tackling the Plastic Waste Challenge Through Design

May 11, 2022 04:00 - 31 minutes - 28.5 MB

This episode explores the role of design in enabling a circular economy for plastics, by delving into the challenges and opportunities of scaling designing for recycling solutions. Julie Zaniewski is joined in this conversation by Jay Fitzgerald from the US Department of Energy and Kathleen Liang from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. The panel discusses the role of individual businesses in advancing plastics recycling and set out their own company goals, including ...

Reducing the Carbon Footprint for Plastics

September 13, 2021 04:00 - 30 minutes - 27.9 MB

This episode delves into the need to reduce CO2 emissions in the plastics industry and how Dow is working towards producing circular plastics with a lower CO2 footprint. Marco Ten Bruggencate is joined by Howard Chase and Erika Sánchez Garrido, from Dow, and Kaj Embren, a sustainable development expert. They discuss why the decade between 2020 to 2030 is crucial in terms climate protection and how ‘The Greta effect’ has caused public consciousness around CO2 levels to grow, sparking a rise i...

Plastics and The European Green Deal

July 02, 2021 15:00 - 22 minutes - 20.8 MB

In this episode, Dow’s Director of EU Affairs, Dennis Kredler, is joined by Plastic Europe’s Director of External Affairs, David Carroll, to discuss the EU’s Green Deal and what it means for the plastics industry. Dennis and David discuss the content and ambitions of the Green Deal, the opportunities and challenges it presents for the plastic industry and what actions organisations such as Dow are taking to ensure they meet the Green Deal’s goal of circularity and climate neutrality by 2050. ...

African Landscapes

June 06, 2021 04:00 - 21 minutes - 20 MB

Tune in to Episode 5 of Plastics Unwrapped to hear an open discussion on the opportunities and challenges we face with plastic waste in Africa and an exploration into how key collaborations are shifting the dial on collecting, sorting and recycling rates to build an effective circular economy. Adwoa Coleman, Africa Sustainability & Advocacy Manager from Dow’s Plastics business, joins Arese Lucia Onaghise, Executive Secretary at The Food and Beverage Recycling Alliance (FBRA) and Keiran Smith,...

Advanced Recycling

May 03, 2021 04:00 - 27 minutes - 25.1 MB

In this episode, Carsten Larsen, Dow’s Commercial Director for Recycling in EMEA & APAC is  joined by Iain Gulland, CEO of Zero Waste Scotland, and Sirt Mellema, CEO of Fuenix Ecogy Group, to discuss ‘game-changing’ advanced recycling technology.  Advanced recycling takes hard-to-recycle, mixed plastic waste and breaks it down into its basic chemical elements – allowing waste to become infinitely recyclable. The panel look at what this technology means for both industry and consumers. Key...

Designing for Recycling

January 22, 2021 16:40 - 24 minutes - 22.3 MB

Why is it so difficult to recycle plastics? What is the difference between recyclable and recycled? Why do recycling rates change so drastically from country to country and even street to street? Dow's Romain Cazenave, Marketing Director for Packaging & Specialty Plastics in EMEA, and Karin Katzer, Marketing Director in EMEA, shed light on this topic and explain how plastic manufacturers can create products that are easier to recycle as well as support recycling systems. They are joined by K...

Bioplastics

January 22, 2021 16:37 - 15 minutes - 14 MB

Dow's Thomas Reutter, Product Director for Packaging & Specialty Plastics in EMEA, and Panu Routasalo, Vice President at UPM Biofuels, talk about market growth for renewable feedstocks and how this fits with the industry’s plans to reduce its carbon emissions. They discuss why approaches like mass balance are important in supporting market growth for bioplastics, as well as the industry's role in ensuring the growth of renewable feedstocks and the need to continue working together with other...

Emotion vs Science

January 22, 2021 16:31 - 31 minutes - 28.5 MB

Dow’s  Marco ten Bruggencate, Commercial Vice President for Packaging & Specialty Plastics in EMEA, and Carsten Larsen, Commercial Director for Plastic Recycling in EMEA, are joined by Jim McClelland, Editor of SustMeme magazine, to discuss ‘Emotion versus Science’ and how that plays out in today’s debate around plastics. Our guests discuss how we can balance the emotional response we all feel when seeing waste, with a logical, scientific approach when it comes to choosing materials. Key di...