Preventing, controlling and managing pollution is central to improving health, human well-being and prosperity for all.
UNEP drives capacity and leadership in sound management of chemicals and waste while working to improve ways to reduce waste through circularity and pollutants released to the air, water, soil and the ocean.
Tengeneza Café is a community workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, where people come together to mend, swap, and reimagine their clothes. It’s about creativity, care, and choosing repair over waste.
This Zero Waste Day and every day, let’s work to beat waste pollution one piece of clothing at a time.
This video has been produced with support from the United Nations Africa Renewal team.
As global leaders in human, animal, plant and ecosystem health, the Quadripartite collaboration reaffirms its unwavering commitment to advancing the One Health approach.
This integrated approach is essential to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, plants, and ecosystems and to address health risks at the human-animal-environment interface. Meeting at WOAH headquarters in Paris for the Third Quadripartite Executive Annual Meeting, we call for urgent, strategic, and sustained support and investments to scale up One Health implementation worldwide.
Read the full joint statement.
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As the world observes the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on 21 March, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Secretariat of the Minamata Convention and the Secretariat of the Global Mercury Partnership, released a set of messages for public use and engagement that highlight the urgent need to stop the production and use of skin-lightening products containing mercury and other hazardous substances.
Despite being regulated by the Minamata Convention, mercury-added products continue flooding markets as many countries face challenges in enforcing the regulations. Stronger and effective policies and legal frameworks on a national level, particularly to control online sales, are essential, say experts. The efforts must also focus on destigmatizing darker skin color and holding companies accountable for promoting harmful beauty standards, they add.
All around the world, from Asia to Africa to Europe, the pressure to have lighter skin is considered deeply rooted in beauty standards, and often shapes self-worth, social interactions and opportunities. Some observers say this colourism is reinforced by today's social media platforms where the new generations are exposed to unattainable beauty standards from a very young age.
The Zero Waste Festival will happen from 26-27 March and ahead of the International Day of Zero Waste 2025. The festival moves the transition towards a zero waste society as a response to the global eco-social crisis. It is a space to generate and share knowledge and foster social and economic progress, encouraging co-responsibility among public and private sectors and civil society.
The aim is to promote the common good by standardising production and consumption models to ensure lower toxicity, reduce resource use, and encourage reuse and product lifecycle extension. The festival offers innovative solutions and supports transformative agents in building a fairer, healthier, and waste- and toxin-free society.
A pioneering new initiative seeks to enhance understanding of mercury trade dynamics in Latin America and foster regional cooperation to improve the control of major mercury flows, aiming to prevent approximately 176 metric tonnes of mercury from entering the international market, reducing the associated negative impacts on human health and environmental integrity.
The initiative, titled Accelerate Minamata Convention Compliance through Improved Understanding and Control of Mercury Trade in Latin America, was officially launched in Bogotá during a two-day inception workshop. The event gathered national and international stakeholders, including representatives from the Minamata Convention Secretariat, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and key institutional partners.
The project aims to strengthen national and regional frameworks for controlling mercury trade, reducing mercury supply, and mitigating its dispersion both regionally and globally. It will assess existing trade monitoring mechanisms in target countries, develop a comprehensive database and network, and support the drafting of national legislation and procedures for tracking and regulating mercury trade.
The Climate and Clean Air Conference 2025 is set to take place from 16-21 March 2025, in Brasília, Brazil.
This year’s theme, “Accelerating Action on Super Pollutants: The Road to COP30,” highlights the urgent need for decisive action.
Zaitsev is on the frontlines of a global effort to blunt what experts call a tidal wave of pollution coming from discarded computers, cell phones and other electronic waste. This rubbish, which is laden with toxic chemicals like lead and mercury, can pollute land, sea and air, causing everything from developmental delays to stillbirths, says the World Health Organization. The toll is especially heavy in the developing world, which for decades has been a dumping ground for electronics from developed countries.
To counter the mounting threat of electronic waste, countries and businesses need to overhaul how electronics are designed, manufactured, recycled and, ultimately, disposed of, say experts.
“Governments and the industry can seize the economic opportunity to reduce the growing concerns about human and environmental exposure to pollution from the electronics life cycle," said Sheila Aggarwal-Khan, Director of UNEP's Industry and Economy Division. “Solutions that encourage the design of durable products that can be reused, refurbished and recycled are a profitable, innovative way forward that is valued by consumers and has a reduced environmental impact.”
The second part of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment (INC-5.2), is scheduled to take place from 5 to 14 August 2025 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
The resumed session will be preceded by regional consultations on 4 August 2025.
