New Delhi, Feb 19 : India will host the World Environment Day 2018, Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan and United Nations Environment Program chief Erik Solheim said on Monday.

India will be the global host of the #WorldEnvironmentDay2018. A document to this effect was signed by Environment Secretary C.K. Mishra and #UN Under Secretary General and Executive Director of #UNEnvironment @ErikSolheim today. pic.twitter.com/4Dx6o6pXrU

— Dr. Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) February 19, 2018

The theme for the World Environment Day-2018, held every year on June 5, is “Beat Plastic Pollution”. It urges governments, industry, communities, and individuals to come together and explore sustainable alternatives and urgently reduce the production and excessive use of single-use plastic polluting our oceans, damaging marine life and threatening human health.

Calling the announcement the “beginning of the end of plastic”, Harsh Vardhan said the ministry will take the lead in discouraging the use of plastic. He added: “If each and every one of us does at least one green good deed daily towards our Green Social Responsibility, there will be billions of green good deeds daily on the planet.”

“For India, World Environment Day 2018 is not a symbolic celebration but a mission,” the Minister said, adding that environmental issues are not merely technical but real moral issues.

Voicing concern over the oceans being polluted due to plastic, Erik Solheim said that plastic pollution is a huge environment and health issue. “India will be a great global host of 2018’s World Environment Day celebrations,” said Erik.

“When big plastics degrade into small pieces, it gets into the ocean. Small plastic particles are eaten by fish. We eat fish and the plastic gets into our body. So plastic pollution is a huge environment and health issue,” Erik Solheim said.

He added: “The country has demonstrated tremendous global leadership on climate change and the need to shift to a low carbon economy, and India will now help galvanize greater action on plastics pollution. It’s a global emergency affecting every aspect of our lives. It’s in the water we drink and the food we eat. It’s destroying our beaches and oceans. India will now be leading the push to save our oceans and planet.”

World Environment Day is a UN Environment-led global event, the single largest celebration of our environment each year, which takes place on June 5 and is celebrated by thousands of communities worldwide.

Plastic Pollution facts:

Every year the world uses 500 billion plastic bags
Each year, at least 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans, the equivalent of a full garbage truck every minute.
In the last decade, we produced more plastic than in the whole last century
50 percent of the plastic we use is single-use or disposable
We buy 1 million plastic bottles every minute
Plastic makes up 10% of all of the waste we generate