World Environmental Week 1-5th June 2010
Tuesday, 22 June 2010 |   |  0 comment

The theme for this year’s World Environmental Week is 'Many Species. One Planet. One Future' and is being hosted by Rwanda. This theme ties in with 2010 being the International Year of Biodiversity as proclaimed by the UN.

June 5th is the official World Environment Day but the week preceding it is included in the time dedicated to focusing on environmental issues and taking part in activities focused on improving the environment. World Environmental Day aims “to be the biggest, most widely celebrated, global day for positive, environmental action” according to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), it goes on to say that the theme for this year aims “to stress the importance of biodiversity for human well-being, reflect on our achievements to safeguard it and encourage a redoubling of our efforts to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss.”

World Environmental Week is a time for us to reflect on our own impact on the environment, it is not about trying to tackle the larger environmental problems but rather about implementing small changes in our personal capacity.

One of the environmental initiatives that is built on this premise is the 10:10 campaign that was started in Britain but has taken on a global form as interest for it grew. 10:10 is being launched publicly on World Environmental Day with events planned worldwide.  The campaign aims to encourage individuals, business and organisations to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010.

We tend not to think twice about where our rubbish goes or the impact it has on the environment but the landfills that are filling up and expanding are forcing us to rethink this behavior. Moves towards recycling and re-using items that can be re-used are increasing in some sectors of society. This behavior needs to move to the mainstream and people need to be more conscious of their impact on the environment.

Alive2green focuses on five sectors – green building, sustainable transport and mobility, sustainable energy resource, sustainable water resource and sustainable waste management. These all contain areas in which we can work towards being less wasteful and more sustainable in our actions.