World Environment Day is celebrated annually on 5th June since 1973. In 1972, the UN General Assembly marked 5 June as World Environment Day. It is the largest global platform led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to reach the public for environmental awareness.

Every year the theme is different. This year the theme is “Beat the Plastic Pollution”. To increase awareness, Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a speech through a video message at a World Environment Day event.

He said, “The model of development that has been created in the big and modern countries of the world for a long time is very contradictory. In this development model, the only thinking about the environment was that first, we should develop our country, then later we will also worry about the environment. With this, such countries achieved the development goals, but the environment of the whole world had to pay the price for their development.”

He also said, “Even today, the developing and poor countries of the world are suffering due to the wrong policies of some developed countries. For decades, there was no one to stop this attitude of some developed countries, there was no country.”

Based on the current theme, he talked about the initiatives taken by the government. He said, “In 2018, India started working at two levels to get rid of single-use plastic. On the one hand, we banned single-use plastic and on the other, plastic waste processing was made mandatory. Due to this, about 30 lakh tonnes of plastic packaging has been recycled in India. This is 75 percent of the total annual plastic waste generated in India.”

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh also attacked the Modi government on Monday said, “There is a gigantic gap between the global talk and local walk.”

People tweeted to share their thoughts and how we can contribute at an individual level.