World Environment Day 2018: Theme, Logo, Slogans & Essay

World Environment Day is an international awareness campaign by the United Nations. It's been celebrated since 1974 with various projects across the world to address environmental problems.Theme for World Environment Day 2018 Every year World Environment Day has a host country and a theme. Any country in the world can host as every country has a long way to go towards sustainable development. The previous host's go from Brazil to Milan with themes like WildforLife(for wildlife conservation )and Raise Your Voice Not the Sea Level. This year it's being hosted in India and the theme is Beat Plastic pollution. The website encourages you to help with that goal with a pledge and a game of tag. In a video with several celebrities, including Tom Felton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dia Mirza(UN Environment’s Goodwill Ambassador for India, explained how disposable plastic items(a leading cause of plastic pollution) can easily be replaced with a reusable alternative and then tagged other celebrities. To participate we are to do the same. Pledge to give up at least one plastic indulgence of ours and replace it with a reusable alternative and then tag a friend to do the same. The slogan for this year is the hashtag #BeatPlasticPollution and it should be used to tag friends. India, the host for this year, has pledged to clean up it's monuments and reduce the use of plastic disposables around them. The Taj Mahal has already has cleaning drives, with teams picking plastic out of the Yamuna river which flows behind it. One can easily volunteer or attend many events by finding some on the World Environment Day website. How plastic is poisoning the Earth Most of plastic packaging we use escapes collection systems, which means that it ends up littering our cities or polluting the natural environment. Even when collected it's often dumped in a landfill where it poisons the soil and finds it's way into the water systems too. According to the World Environment day website, "Every year, up to 13 million tons of plastic leak into our oceans, where it smothers coral reefs and threatens vulnerable marine wildlife. The plastic that ends up in the oceans can circle the Earth four times in a single year, and it can persist for up to 1,000 years before it fully disintegrates." Lack of awareness of the consequences of plastic is why people from lower socio-economic regions are more careless with littering plastic and this finds it's way into harming our ecosystem and consequently us. "Plastic also makes its way into our water supply – and thus into our bodies. What harm does that cause? Scientists still aren’t sure, but plastics contain a number of chemicals, many of which are toxic or disrupt hormones. Plastics can also serve as a magnet for other pollutants, including dioxins, metals and pesticides." warns worldenvironmentday.globalSlogan for World Environment Day 2018 However there is still hope and this years theme aims is to spread awareness of the consequences of disposables and the alternatives to them. The slogan we should all follow is:If an item can only be used once and is then thrown away after, don’t use it. From plastic bags to disposable coffee cups, we use a lot of items briefly which will spend years only to dissolve into microplastics which will further pollute the environment. From carrying your own shopping bags and your own coffee mug, there are a lot of ways we can greatly reduce the plastic pollution we spread.