5 days ago
World Environment Day 2025: What is plastic pollution and why is it a problem?
It's World Environment Day on 5 June, a day organised by the United Nations where campaigners aim to inspire people to take action to protect our planet from climate change and raise awareness of issues around the year's theme is all about plastic pollution and what we can do to tackle it.A recent study by an ocean charity found that the amount of plastic rubbish found on beaches in the UK had increased by nearly 10%.The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) said that their volunteers had picked up three quarters of a million pieces of litter across beaches in the UK in what is plastic pollution and why is it a problem? Keep reading to find you or your school doing anything for World Environment Day? Let us know in the comments below.
What is plastic?
Plastic is in lots of things we use from clothing to crisp packets, and bottles to things from plastic is popular because there are many different types - and it can be made in to all sorts of shapes, colours and can be coloured or clear, thick or thin, strong or you look around your home or school, you'll find most things have plastic in them, including your pencil case, games consoles, and even are man-made and can be produced from natural materials like coal and oil.
What is plastic pollution and why is it a problem?
Plastic pollution is when plastic waste ends up in the environment, and it can damage our oceans, rivers, lakes and main problem with plastic is that most of it isn't biodegradable. That means it doesn't break down in the environment like paper or food, so instead it can hang around for hundreds of year, 400 million tonnes of plastic is produced and 40% of that is single-use - plastic we'll only use once before it's of single-use plastic are carrier bags, drinks bottles and crisp packets.
Millions of tonnes of plastic enters the world's oceans each year and most of that escapes from bits of plastic, called microplastics, have also been found in things like the food we eat and soil in the ground and even in the air we can be blown into the sea from ships and beaches, or carried there by river. Some also gets flushed down the issue is that not all plastic can be might be because of the way it is made up or because it is too expensive or difficult to do.
What's already being done about plastic pollution?
In March 2022, nearly 200 UN countries agreed to start negotiations on an international plan on how to deal with plastic leaders are trying to agree the plastic pollution treaty - setting rules on how plastic is made, used and thrown away - and how the treaty is paid year's World Environment Day comes exactly two months before countries meet in Switzerland to continue negotiating a global agreement to end plastic UN Environment Programme (Unep) aims to bringing countries together to try to work on issues that affect the to the programme, plastic pollution is one of the defining environmental challenges of our time.
