Statement for World Environment Day by the UN Resident Coordinator in North Macedonia, Rossana Dudziak

Humans are creatures of habit and routine. For most of us, availability, ease of use and simple convenience play a much greater role in our decision-making processes than we are aware of. Some 30-40 years ago, most of the bottled drinks available in stores around the world were made of recyclable glass or aluminium cans. People were going shopping with extremely durable and seemingly perpetual reusable cotton, tote bags. Most of the toys were made from metal, glass, or wood.

And then, with the extensive technological development and use of fossil fuel, plastic started to dominate our lives, completely replacing what used to be designed and intended for repetitive use with the convenient, affordable, and single-use approach. In most cases, this quickly transformed to use it and lose it, which is how plastic started to dominate our trashcans, our parks, our rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans.   

Now, more than 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year worldwide, mostly from fossil fuels. Half of those 400 million belong to the single use category, while less than 10 percent is recycled. An estimated 19-23 million tonnes end up in lakes, rivers, and seas annually. And we cannot seem to imagine a life without plastic anymore, even though we are becoming fully aware of how plastic destroys the nature and biodiversity around us and our own health.

Microplastics – tiny plastic particles up to 5mm in diameter, easily find their way into food, water, and air. It is estimated that each and every one of us consumes more than 50,000 plastic particles per year. Yes, plastic is not only around us. It is inside us, and it is causing unimaginable harm to our long-term health and prospects. The more plastic we make, the more fossil fuel is required, the more we intensify the climate crisis.

We are not used to think about preparations before going shopping and taking a tote bag to avoid plastic ones. It is so easy to simply buy a bottle of water when going to the park, when hiking on Vodno, and even when sunbathing on the Ohrid lake shore. It is so easy to make plastic the default standard, even when there is no single reason for that to be so, other than habits and routines.

And dealing with habits is not an easy task. Nowadays, most of the people are aware of their impact on the environment. Nevertheless, they continue   not to act on it, often falling victim to the illusion that their negligence does not matter on the bigger scale.

This can only be changed if two things are urgently implemented. The first one is the seemingly more difficult switch towards a circular economy, focusing on sustainable solutions and taking the plastic out of the “default solution”. The second is, in practice a much bigger challenge and that is the war that we all need to declare on habits and routines. It is a major struggle that we will need to pass, but it is possible. For some of us, we just need to remember the habits that we use to have, those from 30-40 years ago. The key is also not to pass these habits to our children. The world we are leaving to them is already very challenging. We may as well prepare them to change it.

This year’s World Environment Day is focused on finding solutions to plastic pollution. This day is a reminder that people’s actions on plastic pollution matter and that even the smallest changes count, especially when all of us start to make them and they start to grow. So, on this World Environment Day, join us and start fighting your habits and routines! Think about all the situations where you can take plastic out of the equation and help us to clean our planet, our bodies, and our future of the plastic pollution.