World Environment Day - 5 June 2018

Statement on World Environment Day - Theme: Beat Plastic Pollution

June 4, 2018

With 1 million plastic drinking bottles purchased every minute and up to 5 trillion disposable plastic bags used every year, plastic pollution is threatening our ecosystems, biodiversity, and our health, at a pace and scale never seen before. Credit: UNDP.

Protecting the environment and leaving a thriving planet to future generations is in your hands – literally.  

You might think these goals are too huge or too complicated for you to solve on your own, but on this World Environment Day, you can make an easy personal commitment to Beat Plastic Pollution and stop using single-use plastic. 

You may not know what single-use plastic is, but you likely used it recently when you drank bottled water or soda, used a straw, carried vegetables from the market in a bag, or stirred your coffee.   

In fact, single-use plastic is used so widely that a massive island of plastic 3 times the size of France is currently floating between California and Hawaii, and a plastic bag was recently found at a depth of 36,000 feet inside the Mariana Trench.  

And it gets worse: 83% of our tap water contains its particles, and its toxic chemicals can be found in our bloodstream.

With 1 million plastic drinking bottles purchased every minute and up to 5 trillion disposable plastic bags used every year, plastic pollution is threatening our ecosystems, biodiversity, and our health, at a pace and scale never seen before.   

Join the global movement and make a personal commitment to “refuse what you can’t reuse.”   

Earth is not a single-use planet, and your actions can make a difference.