UN House to become first single-use plastic-free workspace in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Because plastic lasts for so long, every single piece of plastic ever made still exists, and will continue for at least 500 years more. To put that in context, if Queen Catherine Kosača of Bosnia had drunk water from a plastic bottle during her wedding, that bottle would not have fully decomposed yet.

Everyday, more and more plastic keeps being produced, used and thrown away. Disposable cups, for example, are often used less than a minute and then thrown away – but keep polluting the environment and our health for centuries. So much plastic is being consumed that there is an area bigger than France of throw-away plastic swirling at all depths in the North Pacific Ocean. It has become so ubiquitous that birds are using it to build their nests.

We all need to take part in cleaning our environment from plastic. To reduce our own environmental footprint and invite others to change everyday actions which impact environment, all UN agencies are as of today engaging in making the UN House in Bosnia and Herzegovina single-use plastic-free. The UN staff in Bosnia and Herzegovina will start phasing out plastics for personal use, in the cafeteria and at the UN-organized events. We are targeting the first “R” of the proper waste management – REDUCE – which is linked to the behavioral change, whereas REUSE and RECYCLE are more system-wide approaches that are also underutilized in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This initiative, which will make the UN House the first single-use plastic free work environment in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is supported by the UNDP Accelerator Lab.

The ambition of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development demands a new kind of approach to everything we do: the more disruptive we are, the more transformational the solutions will be. If your organization wants to become part of the plastic-free workspaces movement as a solution to an ever-increasing contamination with plastics, contact us.