Environmental Sustainability Beyond World Environment Day

World Environment Day (WED) is the United Nation’s principal vehicle for encouraging awareness and action for the protection of our environment. First held in 1974, it has been a flagship campaign for raising awareness on emerging environmental issues from marine pollution, human overpopulation, and global warming, to sustainable consumption and wildlife crime. World Environment Day has grown to become a global platform for public outreach, with participation from over 143 countries annually. Each year, WED has a new theme that major corporations, NGOs, communities, governments and celebrities worldwide adopt to advocate environmental causes. The earth is getting polluted day by day so, we need to protect our environment by conducting many awareness programs all over the world. It is our duty to keep our environment clean. If our surrounding is clean, we will be healthy.

This year, India is the global host of 2018 World Environment Day with “Beat Plastic Pollution” as the theme. Plastic pollution is a menace in our planet. However, curbing that is in no way going to salvage the crisis our environment and ecology is facing. There are several other issues that need to be addressed.

Water is a natural resource that is not renewable and is at its exhausting stage. The challenges that the current water situation presents to the nation are aplenty and each one of them need to be tackled with a different policy. Firstly, the decrease in the availability of water per capita along with deteriorating quality – ‘water crisis’ has been a recurring problem. Adding to this, is the growing conflicts for water and the possibility of further social unrest due to water scarcity. Besides, Water related diseases are the most common cause of deaths. The paucity of clean water for domestic use has led to the increase in the number of deaths in both the urban and rural parts of developing economies. And India is no different.

Safe Water Network India through its initiative of iJal plants aim to reduce the dependency of communities on contaminated water sources and in turn save them from the consequences of water borne diseases linked with it. The plan is to reduce the dependency on contaminated water sources for water consumption in the rural communities and increase the dependency on safe and clean drinking water like that of iJal.  For the above mentioned, consumer activation and awareness programmes are held too. Complete eradication of water borne diseases is wished for through the initiative.

In a bid to encourage and build a sustainable green eco-system, Volkswagen urges customers to book an appointment for a unique waterless car wash, a special service initiative from the brand to assist in water conservation.

Other than water conservation, reducing the carbon footprint is another issue that needs attention. Ola, India’s leading and one of the world’s largest ride sharing companies, announced the return of#FarakPadtaHai (#FPH), a national movement against traffic, carbon footprint, and resulting pollution through the adoption of shared mobility on the occasion of WED. For the second year in a row, through this initiative, Ola calls its customers and communities at large to switch to shared mobility solutions.

Among their initiatives for the WED, EY, the leading global professional services organisation has adopted measuring their carbon footprint by collecting and analysing data on energy consumption in their offices and business travel. The organisation has also pledged to make their meetings more environmentally friendly by reducing the need to travel through video and teleconferencing.

WED 2018, has brought many commitments and initiatives from various entities to work towards environment sustainability. We can only hope these declarations aren’t forgotten after the day is over and the efforts made towards environment conservation deem successful.

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Regards,
The CSR Journal Team

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