Recently, a reporter from Beijing News and Shell Finance learned from the China coordination agency "Picking up China" on World Clean Day that its "World Clean Day Impact Report" released on the 16th showed that plastic pollution has become an urgent environmental and health problem to be solved.

"We are very pleased to see World Clean Day develop into a national event in China. Congratulations to the team that picked up China for achieving such outstanding results," said Estonian Ambassador Han Shuo, who attended the conference. "This year, the United Nations General Assembly officially recognized World Clean Day as an International Day, and September 20th will be dedicated to Clean Day every year. We believe that more and more people will join this event in the future."

Director Sun Yangzhao of the Center for Foreign Cooperation and Exchange of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said at the roundtable session of the conference, "One of the great significance of World Clean Day is to educate the people to take action. National action and broad social participation can help fundamentally solve plastic pollution. The governance of plastic pollution is the full life cycle and full chain management of plastics."

Sun Yangzhao said, "In China, the top-level design of plastic pollution control at the national level is very important. The government coordinates and supervises, implements corporate responsibilities, and promotes public participation, which is a complete framework for plastic pollution control. The greatest significance of World Clean Day is to educate the people to take action, mobilize public action, deepen and broaden social participation, which is very important for solving the problem of plastic pollution."

This year's World Cleanup Day, Pickup China joined hands with the Beijing Entrepreneur Environmental Protection Foundation, Zero Cute Public Welfare, and Beijing Watcher Environmental Protection Foundation to call on 252121 volunteers from 311 cities across the country to carry out 3715 garbage cleaning and picking activities nationwide.

"Climate change, biodiversity crisis, and garbage pollution are three major challenges facing the Earth, among which environmental pollution, especially plastic waste pollution, is closely related to the other two challenges," said Prince Ren, the founder of Pickup China

Plastic waste not only poses great harm to the ecological environment and biodiversity, but is also closely related to climate change. The World Clean Day Impact Report emphasizes that plastic pollution has become an urgent environmental and health issue to be addressed. Global production of 460 million tons of plastic annually, less than 10% is recycled, and two-thirds ultimately flows into the environment or animal stomachs. In response to the pressing challenges, representatives from 175 countries gathered in Paris in June 2023 to negotiate a global treaty on plastic pollution. The United Nations Programme plans to reach a legally binding international convention on reducing plastic pollution before 2024.

The statistical report on picking up past data from China shows that plastic accounts for over 80% of outdoor garbage. "From our perspective of environmental protection, we would prefer everyone to consider how to reduce and replace plastic waste at the source, and how to better apply plastic products, rather than saying that plastic waste is generated, sorted in the future, and then recycled on a large scale. This is a last resort, and more importantly, reducing waste from the front end," said Prince Ren, The recycling of outdoor plastic waste is also very difficult, because most of the outdoor waste is actually polluted, and because everyone is cleaning and clearing it in scattered outdoor areas