Taking Plastics out of Climate Friendly Travel – World Environment Day 2023

The theme for World Environment Day in 2023 is “Beat Plastic Pollution“, against the background of some 400 million tonnes of plastic produced every year, half of which is designed to be used only once.

At SUNx Malta, in solidarity, and in partnership with the World Tourism Network and ICTP, we are adopting a sub-theme to our 2030 Strategy that tracks IPCC Targets and building a responsive Plastics initiative to support our Community Members.

Our Strategy now incorporates a call for peaking of plastic use in 2025, cutting by half in 2030 and Zero Plastics 2050.

To support this, we have created a CFT Plastics Reduction Initiative with our Members and Partners who specialise in this work – Common Seas, Searious Business, Travel without Plastic and the Blue Community who are global players in the Circular Economy, Plastic Elimination and Waste Management.

We will introduce the initiative through selected Chapters, supported by Climate Friendly Travel Services later this year. It is part of our broader “Peak Emissions by 2025 Program”

SUN^x is reaching out to the leadership of the Travel & Tourism sector to act on the latest IPCC Report (6th Assessment 2022), which called for 3 clear actions to have any chance of stabilising global temperatures at Paris 1.5 by mid-century:

–  2025 Peak GHG Emissions

–  2030 Cut by 43%

–  2050 Net Zero

It is a fact that many of the leading Travel & Tourism organizations & companies have strongly committed to the 2030 / 2050 goals – epitomised by the Glasgow Declaration.

But what happened to 2025?

Who in the tourism sector has even recognized the IPCC science-based call, that says any mid and long-term goals are dependent on facing up to the harsh realities now and setting a 2025 peaking ambition? Who wants to even try to bend our trend?

How many floods, wildfires, ice melts and deaths will it take for tourism to act now – not in 7 years’ time?

For sure it is a huge challenge for every tourism stakeholder, and yes aviation is a hard-to-abate sector. But during COVID we faced up to that challenge because there was no alternative. Now we have a chance to prepare – and time to get our act together.

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