World Environment Day 2025 – How We are Beating Plastic and Pollution

At People in Need, we practice what we preach. Our colleagues around the world work hard to minimise and mitigate the impacts of our operations on the natural environment. Likewise, we help the communities we serve to develop and grow sustainably. Through our work, we are committed to improving the planet and the lives of the people who depend on it.

Leading by example

The environmental impact of our work is most evident in disaster relief and post-disaster recovery, as this work can be resource-intensive. Nevertheless, we make great efforts to minimise the environmental harm we cause during our work.

At a global level, we have undertaken to green our operations. This has been driven by our acknowledgement that we can—and must—do better. To this end, we have developed practices and tools that reduce our consumption of fuel, food, energy, and—most relevantly in light of this year's World Environment Day—packaging.

Moreover, we have made our lessons-learned available to other NGOs, CSOs, and other interested parties through our Indikit smart indicators tool. Indikit enables organisations that may not have the time or capacity to develop such plans organically to learn from us. Through guidance on sustainable procurement, waste management, and other aspects of the waste cycle, we enable a broader reduction in waste than would be possible if only focused internally.

To see our whole-of-PIN approach to greening, we can view the work we are undertaking at the country level. For example, in Ethiopia, our team is working specifically to end the procurement of single-use plastics and improve the sustainability of our procurement. At the same time, they have promoted sustainable economic growth in the leather industry. Through the Leather Initiative for Sustainable Employment Creation (LISEC) programme, we have provided much-needed employment. However, we have done this with a focus on mitigating environment-harming activities; as such, we have taken innovative pollution-reducing steps like the introduction of chrome-free tanning technology.

Building better businesses and cleaner communities

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, our team has implemented a project to encourage residents of Sarajevo to separate their waste and increase recycling. The team has installed 275 'green islands' (waste sorting points) to make it easy for the residents to make a small but crucial change to their daily lives and the long-term protection of their homes.

In Ukraine, despite the vagaries of war, many Ukrainians still live with an eye on what they will need post-war. Through the DOVIRA project, we are helping Ukrainian businesses continue in the face of Russian aggression. Notable amongst these, this World Environment Day, are Sem Ecopack and Rekava. These Ukrainian companies have overlapping missions, both wanting to rid the world of plastic waste. In the case of Sem Ecopack, they are working to provide packaging alternatives to plastic in food distribution, whilst Rekava have developed a method of using coffee grounds as an alternative to plastics. These grounds can be used to make various biodegradable goods that can replace their plastic counterparts in everyday life. Our support to these companies has enabled them to make inroads into markets normally dominated by single-use plastics.

Saving the soil and the seas

In addition to taking care of the materials we put into the world, we also promote stewardship of the lands and waterways upon which the people we serve depend.

As with all climate issues, we know climate resilience is not just an issue for lower-income or less developed countries far away; it is also a challenge at home. To this end, we have engaged in a wide array of projects here in the Czech Republic to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Most notable of these projects is our work to build landscape resilience in southern Moravia, which was devastated by a tornado in 2021. This work involves rebuilding damaged homes and farms and doing a deep level of work in the landscape to reduce the factors that led to the tornado in the first place.

In the Czech Republic, our efforts are embodied in our EUKI-ELCA (European Climate Initiative, Empowering Local Community Action) project, which trains climate managers and fosters transnational cooperation.

Beyond work in the Czech Republic, we are working to foster climate resilience from Cambodia to Zambia and places in-between.

In Cambodia, we have fostered climate resilience through solar power projects, which increased the uptake of clean, climate-friendly energy. In the Philippines, we are supporting maritime communities with technologies that will protect their environment and ensure that their communities and livelihoods are protected from the impacts of climate change. In Zambia, we promote climate resilience through projects such as providing bio-slurry and bio-digesters. These provide climate-friendly fuel and nutrient-dense fertilisers for communities on the cusp of a climate catastrophe caused by arid soil and erosion caused by deforestation.

Supporting such initiatives reduces the environmental impact of our work and increases the environmental sustainability of the people we serve. Engaging communities to be climate-conscious, particularly in applying local solutions to local problems regarding energy and the environment, is vital to the success of our work.

Collective problems need collective action

Across all of our work, it is clear that often we cannot solve problems from afar; we need—and want—local input, and we need to work together. To this end, we seek to include local actors in the design and implementation of our activities.

In Kosovo, we recently brought local actors on a study trip to Slovenia to learn lessons from that country's successful green transition. This trip brought public and private actors together to collaborate on addressing the needs of safe waste management, upcycling, and the circular economy in Kosovo.

Likewise, we have engaged local micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the Switching On the Green Economy (SOGE) project in Mongolia. The SOGE project team recently obtained the approval of five pivotal environmental standards by Mongolia's Technical Committee on Environmental Standards. These standards will set how businesses and industries declare and label goods as ecological. It is hoped that these standards will help consumers to choose more environmentally friendly goods and incentivise producers to limit the environmental harm of their goods. 

These standards could help Mongolia transition to a low-carbon economy, reduce poverty, and foster circular economy practices. In Mongolia, our team is leading efforts to support a green transition that will make Mongolia a better place for its people.

In a final example of local inclusion, we return to the theme of World Environment Day—Beat Plastic Pollution—and to our colleagues in Nepal. In collaboration with Clean Up Nepal and Biocomp Nepal, they have taken to removing plastic waste from the Kathmandu River. The project focuses on establishing a complete value chain for collecting and recycling plastic waste materials not currently recycled in Nepal and using them as the basis for making multi-purpose plastic boards. In addition to addressing a vital environmental emergency and ridding Nepal of thousands of tonnes of plastic waste, the project strongly emphasises the reuse of a material that would otherwise be left to harm the soil and water of this beautiful country. Moreover, the project has a wider benefit in engaging vulnerable communities: informal waste workers, migrant workers, especially women and youths, providing them with much-needed employment.

On World Environment Day 2025, we ask you to take inspiration from our colleagues and collaborators worldwide and be the change you wish to see. Think about how you and your loved ones could make changes and benefit from beating plastic pollution, and how you can make your home a better place for all.