World Environment Day 2009

By Dave, 25 May 2009

Held every year on 5 June, World Environment Day is a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) initiative to stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and enhance political attention and action.

The host this year is Mexico, which as an emerging economy faces a whole range of environmental challenges – and, encouragingly, seems to be willing to do something about them. But there are events all round the world, including showings of a feature-length film, HOME, in cities including Paris, New York and Athens. HOME is “a travel notebook, showing landscapes captured from a bird’s eye view above. This film calls for a new awareness, inviting the viewer to stop for a moment in order to look at our planet and realise how we treat her treasures and her beauty”.

The World Environment Day pages on UNEP’s website have a list of Daily do something Tips – easy ways in which everyone can do something for the planet. One or two of them are a bit weird, for instance this one:

When you are feeling at your laziest, don’t throw clean clothes in the hamper to avoid hanging them up!

Surely there can’t be that many people who take clothes out of the wash only to put them straight back in again?

And some of them will have limited application in all but the most developed countries, for example the one about driving with cruise control. But most of the tips are very straightforward indeed: things as simple as not leaving the tap running while you’re cleaning your teeth.

So it’s worth having a look at the site, if only to reassure yourself that you’re using the earth’s resources responsibly.

UNEP: World Environment Day 2009