EARTHDAY.ORG President Kathleen Rogers released the following statement in response to the outcomes of the United Nations Environment Assembly 5.2 on global plastics.

"Today is a historic moment in the fight against plastic pollution. This resolution to forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024 will address the full lifecycle of plastics - a critical component to end global plastic pollution. The environmental movement has just witnessed a major step forward - as significant as the Paris Agreement. While this is a great start, we have much more work to do to ensure that the agreement includes realistic, scalable, and equitable regulations of plastics worldwide. We must also support innovations in this field such as finding a truly biodegradable product that will substitute for plastic in the years to come.

As a core issue for EARTHDAY.ORG, we have been passionately advocating for years and years for this kind of action. From poisoning and injuring marine life to the ubiquitous presence of plastics in our food to disrupting human hormones and causing major life-threatening diseases, the exponential growth of plastics is threatening our health and the planet's survival. According to a 2021 report from UNEP, several common chemicals found in plastics have been linked to endocrine disruption, developmental disorders, reproductive abnormalities, and cancer.

Plastic pollution is a transboundary issue that requires considerable investment from every sector. The global plastics instrument has the potential to revolutionize how we interact with consumer products, to reconstruct business models, to protect our well-being, and to transform the green economy. We must continue this momentum."

ABOUT EARTHDAY.ORG:
EARTHDAY.ORG's mission is to diversify, educate, and activate the environmental movement worldwide. Growing out of the first Earth Day (1970), EARTHDAY.ORG is the world's largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 150,000 partners in nearly 192 countries to build environmental democracy. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day actions each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world. Learn more at earthday.org.