The 2025 edition of World Environment Day focuses on putting an end to plastic pollution. For decades, plastic pollution has seeped into every corner of the world, leaching into the water we drink, into the food we eat, and our bodies. While plastic pollution is a major concern, it is also one of the most fixable of today’s environmental challenges, with some obvious solutions at hand.
This year’s World Environment Day observance comes as countries make progress towards securing a global treaty to end plastic pollution, including in the marine environment. In November 2024, the Republic of Korea hosted the fifth session of negotiations to develop a plastic pollution treaty, and is this year the official host of World Environment Day. The fifth session of the international negotiation committee will resume in Geneva from 5 to 14 August 2025.
To celebrate World Environment Day, the traditional celebration at the International Environment House II in the morning of Thursday 5 June 2025, will include various key moments.
1. World Environment Day Breakfast offered by the host country.
2. World Environment Day Forum | Multilateral Geneva Collectively Beating Plastic Pollution
From 9:00 to 10:30 CEST, the International Environment House II will open its doors for the Forum. Partners and stakeholders will gather together and showcase how international Geneva creates synergies, drives innovation, and boosts ambition to advance the beat plastic pollution agenda.
Many actors in Geneva are actively working to address the plastic crisis at the global and local levels. As a hub of environmental and health governance, Geneva plays an important role in the multilateral processes to address plastic pollution. Showcasing Geneva expertise through the work on environmental issues, chemical governance, health, human rights, trade and many relevant areas of work, the Forum will spotlight their contribution to global processes to end plastic pollution.
3. World Environment Day Dialogue | Multilateral Geneva Collectively Beating Plastic Pollution
In line with the official World Environment Day 2025 Celebration hosted in South Korea, the Geneva Environment Network is organizing a dialogue to highlight how multilateral Geneva collective efforts to beat plastic pollution, including through the Geneva Beat Plastic Pollution Dialogues.
These dialogues were launched two years before the adoption in 2022 of a historic resolution at the United Nations Environment Assembly, setting up the path to a global treaty to end plastic pollution. They have been making links with ongoing multilateral processes to tackle plastic pollution, in Geneva and beyond and convened by the Geneva Environment Network in collaboration with the governments of Norway and Switzerland, the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions Secretariat, the Center for International Environmental Law, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Forum on Trade, Environment & the SDGs (TESS), and the University of Geneva.
The intergovernmental negotiating committee to develop the international legally binding instrument (INC) that was set up following the adoption of the resolution, will be resuming its fifth session in Geneva, from 5 to 14 August 2025.
Multilateral Geneva plays a pivotal role in advancing the global agenda to beat plastic pollution, serving as a hub for multilateral cooperation, policy development, and scientific research. Various ongoing initiatives and processes to be highlighted during the celebration foster engagement among intergovernmental organizations, governments, businesses, scientists, civil society, and individuals to drive coordinated action to end plastic pollution, in support to a successful and ambitious outcome of the INC process.