The podcast Boy Wasted, funded through Journalismfund's Environmental Investigative Journalism grant programme, has already received four major awards and nominations, capping a year in which this investigation on Europe’s plastic waste trade prompted political debate and renewed scrutiny of waste exports from the UK and EU.
Produced by journalists Smoke Trail Productions, ENDS report and Adnan R. Khan, the three-part investigation began with the discovery of a teenage boy’s body inside a bale of plastic waste at a recycling facility in southern Turkey. The reporting traced the journey of plastic exported from Europe and examined the environmental and human consequences of a global waste system that sends millions of tonnes of material overseas each year.
The investigation has been included in Greenpeace Unearthed’s list of the best environmental journalism of 2025 and was shortlisted in the Radio and Podcasts category of the Amnesty International UK Media Awards 2026. It was also named Podcast of the Year at the British Society of Magazine Editors Awards and received the Professional Publishers Association’s 2026 Award for Audio Content of the Year.
The honours recognise a project that combined cross-border reporting, data analysis and on-the-ground investigation in the UK and Turkey. Through interviews with waste workers, local residents, industry representatives and policymakers, the journalists documented how plastic collected for recycling in Europe can end up in communities struggling with pollution, weak enforcement and unsafe working conditions, leading to disastrous consequences.
The reporting has been cited by MPs, environmental organisations and waste-sector experts in calls for stronger regulation of plastic waste exports. By connecting a single unexplained death to wider questions about international waste flows, Boy Wasted brought new attention to an issue that is often treated as a technical problem rather than a matter of environmental justice and public accountability.
