Plastic Free July is Coming to an End? The Problem Worsening Unabated. We Need More Action, More Education, More Training and Better Strategy.

July 2024 is almost gone. Environmentalists have been in what is terms Plastic Free July whose main aim was to bring people's attention to the environmental consequences of our continued use of plastic in general and thin plastic in particular. These events, if well organised, do have an impact in changing mindsets and creating awareness to environmental challenges. Sadly, in many parts of the world, the themed days or months come up and very little if any high impact programs and activities are planned and implemented on the themes. Most activities will be kind of low key, with some being publicity stunts where few people gather and do very little which is then amplified by the press. Some organisations and people may even claimed to doing a lot of work on the ground, talking about dealing with thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions of tons of waste when what they are doing has very little impact on the problem.

Many people who have the energy, skills, expertise and experience in specific areas of environmental management, sustainable development and sustainability are excluded from taking part is the strategic, technical, operational and managerial work that effectively delivers results while a lot of funding often goes to excellent marketers but who lack the expertise to deliver results.

As the plastic free July closes, we must reflect on this issue of plastic and our commitment to the cause. How serious are we as individuals, companies, organisations, countries and society to achieving sustainability and to ending plastic use?

1. What have we achieved this July?
2. Is what we are doing working when it comes to our efforts at ending or reducing plastic pollution?
3. Are we doing environmental activities out of the genuine love of out planet or we are using the problem just as a source of employment and getting financial resources?
4. Has our focus on plastic this July created some forward momentum into the July 2025 everything ends on 31 July and we wait for July 2025?
5. Are we well organised as a society and communities to engage in high impact activities that will slow down and eventually end plastic pollution? Our our environmental management behaviours changing?
6. Is the sustainable development and environmental management area still a fiefdom of a few elitist "experts" and organisations who are driving the whole agenda alone without massive, pervasive and active participation of the global grassroots? In other words, what proportion of local populations are aware of sustainable development issues, sustainable development goals and sustainability, what they mean to them as individuals, families and communities and what roles they have to play in the whole sustainable development agenda including contributing to achieving The Global Goals?
7. Are we making serious efforts at managing our strategies and approaches to the implementation of The SDGs overall and the individual goals?
8. How serious are we with this sustainable development as a human race?

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©Simon Bere, 2024

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