The recent UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.2) will go down in history for its historic agreement to end plastic pollution.
The draft resolution– which was endorsed by UN Member States and will become a legally binding agreement by 2024– was sealed when Espen Barth Eide, the Minister of Climate and the Environment for Norway and the president of UNEA, brought down a recycled plastic gavel.
The gavel, produced by Nzambi Matee, a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Young Champion of the Earth, was made using recycled plastic bottle tops from the Dandora landfill in Nairobi. At the end of the assembly the gavel was gifted to UNEP by Norway.