World Environment Day 2025
Used soda can thrown among the aquatic plants of a river, polluting. Image: josemiguelsangar/stock.adobe.com
The 5 June 2025 marks World Environment Day, which continues to focus on negotiating a global treaty to end plastic pollution.
As the UN secretary general’s message states, plastic permeates many aspects of all our lives, whether we like it or not. Microplastics have not only tainted marine life, but have also been found in human blood and breast milk. Plastic waste has been seen at the far reaches of the earth, including at the top of Mount Everest and even down in the Mariana Trench.
Having said that, we all know that the problem doesn’t fully lie in its use – many products outside of packaging may need to be made out of plastic – but in its method of disposal, and recycled content. That is what the UN wants to see change in order to eliminate plastic waste.
In 2022, at the UN Environment Assembly, Member States agreed to begin negotiations on an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment. Since then, countries have met at five sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution to work towards an agreement.
Now in the third year of negotiations, the second part of the fifth session of the INC (INC-5.2) will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 5 to 14 August 2025. This, according to the UN, marks a critical turning point – what it calls a “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure a global treaty that redefines our relationship with plastics and safeguards human and environmental health.”
While the focus is on plastic for World Environment Day, let’s not also forget the role of all the communities across the planet carrying out can collection services to help ensure 100 per cent of metal packaging is recycled back into new cans, completing the circular loop. Tomorrow will certainly be a day for reflection on what we can all do to help play our part, as well as championing metal packaging’s role in a sustainable, pollution-reduced future.
- Alex Rivers (she/her), CanTech International editor
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