National Environment Month is celebrated in June, with World Environment Day on the 5th June. During the month of June the South African government and stakeholders in  environmental affairs will focus on ways to stimulate awareness on environmental issues and challenges. The aim is to improve and encourage change from industries to household  habits in order to preserve and protect our planet.

World Environment Day is the biggest annual event on the UN environment programme calendar. The UN, being aware of the critical state of degradation of ecosystems globally,  proclaimed the UN Decade on Ecosystems Restoration, follow the link. https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/follow-generationrestoration The purpose of this is a worldwide appeal for support and increasing efforts to prevent, halt and where possible reverse the degradation of ecosystems. A task team was formed involving a group of 85 individuals from 32 global leading organizations with a roadmap to reach the objectives of  the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org). A wide range of relevant information and resources, for example guidelines, websites, training etc is available to aid the stakeholders in achieving objectives. The available resources cover all aspects of ecosystem restoration which involves the planning, implementation and monitoring of projects.

Within the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 17 sustainable development goals are set  out. The environment underlies each goal and the aim is to ensure that the environment is  integrated into all aspects of sustainable development.

Ecosystem restoration improves and repairs a wide spectrum of environmental circumstances from regeneration of new forest areas to the sustainability of urbanization. The world’s cities occupy 3% of the Earth’s land, but are accountable for 60-80% of energy consumption and  75% of carbon emissions. All governments, communities, conservation organisations and  private sector are stakeholders in playing a role to achieve the objectives of the Decade.  Currently there are many projects worldwide busy with restoring the environment, and the  Decade will reinforce and support such projects. A prime example is the Bonn Challenge, launched in 2011 by the German Government and International Union for Conservation of  Nature (IUCN) as a global goal to restore 150 million hectares of degraded forest area by  2020. This target was surpassed in 2017. A further challenge was implemented to restore  another 350 million hectares of degraded forest area by 2030.

On the local scene it is estimated nearly 5.7 million hectares of land in South Africa has been  degraded. Large portions of degraded land is found in the rural areas where the population  density is high and poor communities are dependent on natural resources. Land  restoration programmes will allow the land to recover and also have social and financial  benefits for the local rural communities. The Department of Environment, Forestry &  Fisheries have initiated the “Working for Ecosystems” programmes to assist with land  restoration.

The challenge to repair and prevent further damage to our planet lies with everyone. The  Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) can only be met as a global movement in saving our  planet for the next generations (#generationrestoration). Restoring damaged ecosystems is an  efficient and cost-effective way people can work with nature to address the most pressing  challenges humanity is facing today, i.e. the Coronavirus disease 2019. (UNEP/FAO  Factsheet).

The awareness of climate change and other environmental challenges has increased through  social media, internet and education. To successfully meet the targets set in the Sustainable  Development Goals co-operation with a wide diversity of skills, knowledge and experience is  required. Ecosystem restoration is a grassroots reaction to global challenges, it varies from  small school gardens to cleaning our beaches.

As a further contribution and taking up the challenges of restoration of ecosystems we will  be donating trees to the ‘Precious Tree Project” as an effort to restore indigenous and  endemic forest trees along the Garden Route District.

At Multi-cup Solutions, being aware of the impact of packaging on the environment, we have increased our enviro-friendly range of packaging. Furthermore we have recently introduced a sustainable packaging range made from renewable plant-based resources called Precious Planet.