World Environment Day 2023

Today, June 5, is World Environment Day, celebrated since 1973 led by the United Nations to encourage awareness of and action for the protection of our environment. This year is the 50th annual celebration, and it’s quite disheartening to realize where we are in terms of taking care of our planet.

This year’s focus is on plastic pollution, with the campaign #BeatPlasticPollution. This should hit close to home, as we (the Philippines) are among the top contributors of plastic pollution in the oceans – we produce over a third of oceanic plastic waste, about 0.75 million metric tons a year.

The sando bags, the sachets of shampoo and toothpaste, the tetra packs, the plastic spoons and forks, the bottles of “mineral” water are all very convenient; grab one, use it, then throw it away. We should reverse the throw-away trend – bring your water jug (it doesn’t have to be one of those expensive thermo bottles) that can be refilled, use utensils that can be washed and reused, bayongs or eco-bags that are stronger and can hold more. Substituting paper bags (supot) for plastic is not really the answer; supots are usually one-time use as well.

Today, as we acknowledge and celebrate the environment, is a good time to change our ways, not just about plastic usage, but about how we live. I particularly like what writer Henry David Thoreau said: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

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