WWF has calculated that 570,000 tonnes of plastic end up in the Mediterranean alone every year, the equivalent of around 33,000 small bottles per minute. According to the most recent studies, by 2050 the amount of plastic in the sea is expected to exceed that of fish.
In 2019 the Italian Youth Association for UNESCO created the #unite4earth campaign, with the aim of raising awareness among civil society, and in particular the younger generations, of the issue of environmental pollution, greatly aggravated by the huge amount of plastic present in the seas across the planet. The idea behind the campaign is to support the initiative of the Ministry of the Environment on the establishment of the “green helmets”, that is, educators and trainers capable of raising the younger generations’ awareness of environmental protection and of developing an ecological mindset, able to rethink the relationship between humankind and the environment itself.
We need a new environmental consciousness on a global basis. To do this, we need to educate people.
Mikhail Gorbachev
To promote this campaign, AIGU, in collaboration with One Ocean Foundation, launched Ocean Night – the tour dedicated to reducing, recycling and reusing plastic. A series of events that stopped in several Italian cities, from North to South, with the aim of spreading good & smart practices on the subject of sustainability, to safeguard the ecosystem by adopting a more responsible use of the resources available to us and limiting plastic waste as much as possible.
At each stop, special cups called Pcup were handed out, made of silicone, a material extracted from sand rather than from oil. Colourful, unbreakable, foldable and reusable countless times. PCUP is an alternative solution to the use of single-use plastics; what is more, every Pcup has a cutting-edge digital identity: a chip is embedded in the base, and you simply place it on your smartphone to order and pay for drinks, buy drinks for friends, and receive exclusive content from the event you are attending. The linked app also lets you quantify the grams of plastic saved during the evening.
Our biggest challenge in this new century is to take an idea that seems abstract: sustainable development.
Kofi Annan