World Environment Day 2025: We Have A Problem And It's Deeper Than Just Plastics

Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash

Today, Thursday 5th of June , people in over 150 countries are coming together to mark World Environment Day. Created by the United Nations, the celebration serves as a platform for raising awareness and driving global action on the environment.

Over the past five decades, World Environment Day has grown from a symbolic occasion into a global mobilisation, sparking policy changes, business commitments, and community action. It has inspired international treaties, bans on harmful pollutants, and greater environmental literacy.

Each year, the day centers on a theme that highlights a critical environmental issue - from themes on climate change and desertification to more recent focuses like ecosystem restoration, World Environment Day reflects both the urgency of environmental challenges and the capacity for collective action.

In 2025, the spotlight is on one of the most pervasive and visible forms of pollution: plastic. The official theme, “Beat Plastic Pollution,” sheds the light on the urgent need to curb the production, consumption, and mismanagement of plastic waste.

Plastic pollution is one of the most durable forms of pollution. With microplastics found in oceans, soils, and even human lungs and bloodstreams, the crisis has escalated beyond littering into a systemic threat to ecosystems and public health.

Each year, an estimated 430 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally, and only 9% is successfully recycled. The rest accumulates in landfills, rivers, and oceans. It chokes wildlife, leaches toxins, and fragments into micro- and nanoplastics that infiltrate food chains.

Plastic pollution has cascading effects which include:

• Ecological: Marine species mistake plastics for food, leading to injury and death. Coral reefs, already stressed by warming waters, suffer additional harm from plastic entanglement and infection.

• Economic: Tourism, fisheries, and shipping industries bear the cost of plastic debris, estimated at billions of dollars annually.

• Human Health: New studies show microplastics can cross the blood-brain barrier and may have toxicological effects on cells and organs.

Importantly, plastic pollution disproportionately impacts the Global South, where informal waste systems and imported plastic waste compound environmental injustice.

World Environment Day 2025 aims to draw attention to the issue and its solutions.

By focusing attention on plastic as a gateway issue, we open the door to wider conversations about sustainable consumption, circular economies, and the redesign of materials, systems, and societies.

Celebrating World Environment Day is a prompt for action, and we are free to use it how we see fit.

For instance, I'd like to use it as an opportunity to take a little step back - if I wasn't a professional from the field, I would be deeply confused by articles like this one coming out today on the importance of mitigating plastics pollution.

Plastics pollution is a significant problem, don't get me wrong, but it would be hard to place it in the context of other environmental problems - I'd have trouble following whether I should act on this rather than climate change and biodiversity, which seem to be emphasised as the bigger threats. I'd quickly reach cognitive overload and struggle to actually take action.

The simple thought of going through the process of identifying priorities, scales and weights without an environmental background is exhausting.

But I'm lucky to have that environmental background. It makes me think that today, June 5th 2025, is the perfect opportunity to shed light on how we don't have a plastics problem as much as we have a problems problem. Plastics are just a symptom of a very simple, but much deeper issue - and I think that this insight is worth sharing.

Why Does It Seem Like There Are Countless Environmental Crises?

Why is it that it's so hard to keep track of all environmental threats - as if there is an endless supply of them?

The global political landscape (and by "global political landscape" I mean the set of structures we have in place for collective decision making, from local democracy to the UN) is already saturated with bad news - meaning that anything new gets lost in the overwhelming noise of constant solicitation of our attention, which is drawn to an already long list of current problems: inflation, poverty, war, unstable politics, and the looming threat of invasion by enemies and allies alike.

This can give the impression that environmental issues just lengthen the already long list of all major global issues.

But more importantly, there is in fact an endless supply of environmental crises.

To name a few, we are facing climate change, biodiversity loss, plastics pollution, toxic waste pollution (from metals, chemicals, nuclear waste), deforestation, ocean acidification, and many more. Needless to say, the consequences of these crises will be fatal - with some estimating that the resulting death toll and economic contraction will be respectively 2+ billion lives and 50% contraction within the upcoming decades.

Maybe this isn't the right way to look at the situation though. Would it make sense to stand under a waterfall and reflect on how the supply of water seems to never have an end?

It wouldn't be very productive - or at least less so than moving away and going right to the source. So let's walk up the stream!

Plastics pollution is an environmental problem, so let's start with what exactly is the environment.

The modern understanding of the environment encompasses interconnected systems (natural, urban, atmospheric, aquatic, and even digital) that support both human and non-human life - and that already gives us a clue of what's going on.

The environment is the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food systems that nourish us, and the climate patterns that shape our lives. It is the web of life that links soil microbes to global economies - it's everything around us, as suggested by its Old French origin "environer" meaning "to surround, circle".

In this light, environmental degradation is not just an “ecological issue” - it is a human issue, tied to health, safety, equity, and long-term survival.

This broader perspective is critical in addressing plastic pollution.

Plastic waste is not isolated to landfills or ocean gyres. It is embedded in urban planning, trade systems, consumer culture, and supply chains.

And plastic waste is not isolated from other environmental crises either.

Making plastic requires fossil fuels; using plastic enables long distance transport of tightly packaged, sometimes refrigerated goods; having plastic as a manufacturing option makes it easy to sell soda cans coated with a protective layer, as well as water bottles, toys, casings for electronics, shoes, clothes, home appliances, etc.

Plastics use fossil fuels as input, and enable more industrial activity as output - like all other technology, in year Y+0 it generates efficiency gains at the economic activity level for that year, which leads to increased activity from Y+1 to Y+N. This is so true that it even applies to energy efficiency gains, which paradoxically lead to increased energy expenditure (due to the well-known rebound effect).

This interconnectedness of environmental issues means that every strand of the environmental crisis has consequences for many other issues. Plastics pollution is part of what we call a systemic problem, a problem that has to do with the system-scale rather than the component scale.

A New Era For The Environment

Scientists increasingly agree that we are no longer in the Holocene. We’ve entered the Anthropocene - a new geological epoch defined by the scale and impact of human activity on Earth’s systems.

We are a geological force now. Humanity moves more sediment than all of the world’s rivers combined. We’ve altered over three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface, driven wildlife populations down by more than 60% since 1970, and raised atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to levels unseen in millions of years.

If the Anthropocene had a signature material, it might be plastic.

Synthetic, durable, and omnipresent, plastic is both a product and a symbol of this era. Microplastics have been found in the most remote corners of the world - from Arctic ice to the Mariana Trench - and even inside human bloodstreams and brains.

Plastic pollution is a striking illustration of how deeply our industrial footprint has penetrated the natural world.

Because of that, more than a problem, it’s a signal, a symptom of a key characteristic of the Anthropocene. It tells us that what we’re facing is not one isolated crisis, but a convergence of many.

This is what scientists and policymakers now increasingly describe as a polycrisis: a set of interconnected environmental, social, and economic challenges that reinforce and intensify one another.

We’re not imagining it - our systems are under immense and accelerating stress. Climate disruption, biodiversity collapse, freshwater shortages, and plastic pollution are not discrete problems. They are intertwined, compounding each other in feedback loops that make them harder to predict and solve.

At the root of this lies a sobering reality: Earth’s systems are absorbing pressures faster than they can adapt.

This pattern isn’t new. Historically, we’ve responded to environmental and societal limits by innovating - developing synthetic fertilisers during food shortages, deploying air conditioning in response to heatwaves, or mass-producing plastics to meet the needs of a growing population.

In doing so, we’ve managed to push the boundaries outward.

But there’s a catch: each time we push the limits, we increase our dependence on the very systems we’re straining - and accelerate toward the next crisis. We’ve built a world where our ability to produce and consume grows exponentially, while our ability to adapt and regenerate does not.

To put it simply: we are accelerating faster than our systems can brake.

This isn’t just about “overflowing the bathtub” with too much carbon or plastic. We’re applying pressure from every angle. We're pouring in pollutants (greenhouse gases, microplastics, heavy metals, synthetic chemicals) while simultaneously eroding nature’s ability to absorb the shock: forests, wetlands, soil, clean water, stable climates, biodiversity.

All of Earth’s life-support systems (climate, oceans, ecosystems, water, air) are under compound stress. And in such systems, stress doesn’t add linearly, it multiplies. When one part breaks, it weakens the whole. That’s how tipping points work: everything seems stable until it suddenly isn’t.

And we haven’t solved any of these crises yet. In many cases, we’re only beginning to feel the consequences. So what do we do?

Hope in a Polycrisis

There’s a silver lining in the very complexity of our predicament: when everything is connected, solutions can be too.

Take plastic: reducing plastic production doesn’t just clean up beaches. It lowers fossil fuel demand (since plastics are petrochemical products), reduces air and water pollution, eases the burden on waste systems, and improves human health.

Or consider reforestation. Planting trees doesn’t only sequester carbon - it restores habitats, rebuilds biodiversity, regulates local climates, improves soil health, and often supports local livelihoods.

This is the power of systemic thinking: we don’t need to solve every crisis individually - instead we can treat them all as a whole, where tackling any one of them is a core step in addressing all others. It's not just problems that have compound effects, solutions do to.

By identifying leverage points - like material flows, land use, energy systems, or consumption habits - we can unlock positive ripple effects across many domains.

The lesson is clear: the more interconnected our problems, the more powerful integrated solutions become. Investing in regenerative, system-aware interventions is one of the highest-impact choices we can make.

And the heart of most of these issues, lie what I think are the big three: fossil fuel entrenchment, wealth distribution and usage, and economic runaway.

Of course, it follows that the core solutions for a liveable and healthy future are all those that address these three root issues behind the polycrisis.

From Overwhelm to Action: A Practical Approach

Understanding that we are living through a polycrisis can feel daunting, but awareness is not the end of the road. It’s the beginning of a more strategic, grounded kind of action. The goal isn’t to solve everything at once. It’s to start acting where we can, in ways that ripple outward.

1. Facing the Full Picture

Rather than narrowing our attention to single issues, we need to embrace the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and economic systems. Seeing the whole doesn’t have to mean paralysis - it can mean clarity. When we understand that plastics, climate, biodiversity, and inequality are woven together, we can stop asking “which problem is more urgent?” and start asking “where can I contribute most effectively?”

2. Knowing Our Position in the System

Individuals, companies, cities, governments, every actor sits within a web of dependencies and impacts.

Membership organisations are in a particularly strong position. Facing both industry and policymakers, while they often struggle with capacity, they have the high ground - they have the visibility and reach to coordinate industry and sector-wide change.

When it comes to their members, they can ask where do their materials and energy come from? What do they consume, emit, or discard? And more importantly, what do they need to be able to measure these inputs and outputs, and what do they need to be able to change? Mapping this out is a first step toward changing it.

3. Turning Data Into Direction

Tools like carbon calculators, life cycle assessments, and environmental impact audits are quite straightforward. They move us from vague concern to targeted strategy. Once we know the biggest sources of harm in our footprint, we can focus your effort where it counts.

4. Pulling the Big Levers

Focus on interventions with outsized effects. These often include:

• Transitioning to renewable energy sources (Heat recovery, heat pumps, solar panels, green tariffs, electric vehicles).

• Eliminating or replacing single-use plastics

• Supporting policy reforms that regulate harmful industries

• Supporting policy reforms that enable and support change

• Investing in circular and regenerative business models

Small changes signal intent - but big shifts shape outcomes.

5. Acting Together

No one actor can shift a system alone. The real power lies in coalition - networks of aligned individuals, institutions, and movements working in sync. Whether you're joining a local campaign, forming public-private partnerships, or contributing to open-source solutions, collaboration accelerates impact and sustains momentum - Climate Action for Associations is an example of such collaboration, and we always welcome new associations among our members.

Moving Forward...

Plastic pollution isn’t just a waste issue. It’s a window on how our systems, built for extraction and speed, are misaligned with the regenerative cycles of the natural world.

But the good news is that systemic problems are also systemic opportunities. Because everything is connected, meaningful action in one domain can have ripple effects across many others.

World Environment Day is not a prompt to feel overwhelmed - it’s a prompt to re-engage. It invites us to reconnect with the systems that support us, to redesign them with intention, and to rebuild them with justice and resilience in mind.

In the end, we don’t need everyone to do everything. We need enough of us to do something - collaboratively, with urgency, and above all, with a clear idea of what contribution we're going to make to change our system from one that's crashing, to one that will enable a safe future for us and our children.

If you'd like to join industry leading associations committed to making that change happen, join the Climate Action for Associations collective by clicking here.