World Environment Day is celebrated annually on 5th June and is a platform for the UN to encourage global awareness of environmental issues and prompt action for the protection of the environment.

This year, the theme of World Environment Day is beating plastic pollution, particularly through reducing consumption of single-use plastics. Around the world, a staggering one million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute and around 500 billion single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year, equating to over 1 million a minute.

UNEP-WCMC is committed to reducing our plastic consumption, and our wider impacts on the environment. Earlier this year, our Environment Committee developed a new 5 year environmental strategy to reduce the Centre’s emissions and waste and improve biodiversity.

On this World Environment Day, we are examining our targets and how we are helping to #beatplasticpollution.

We have set ourselves targets across five areas:

• To reduce greenhouse gas emissions from work-related travel
• To reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from our office energy use
• To reduce waste and improve water efficiency
• To increase the number of suppliers and products that can demonstrate positive environmental impacts, and
• To improve biodiversity in spaces within the Centre

The Centre has also created an Environmental Footprint Key Performance Indicator (KPI). This means that environmental impact is a key factor on monitoring the success of the Centre, and is integrated into decision-making at senior management level.

In practice, the Centre has reduced energy consumption through the installation of pipe cladding throughout the building and washing out the heating system to improve efficiency, encouraging people to travel by bike, encouraging train as a mode of transport for international travel and by securing a green electricity supplier. With respect to biodiversity, the Centre staff have also built an insect hotel, planted more wild flowers and will create more habitats for local wildlife.

Finally, the Centre is very committed to #beatplasticpollution. We have removed all plastic bottles from the site vending machine, switched to milk supplied in reusable glass bottles and set ourselves an additional goal to eliminate single-use plastics in all of our business operations.

A summary of our specific fiveyear targets can be found here.