World Environment Day by the United Nations was found to encourage international awareness to protect our environment. The day is celebrated in over 100 countries from around the world with many initiatives on creating a safer and greener tomorrow based on an annual theme that is decided by the United Nations.

With this year’s theme being air pollution, the UN called all governments, industries, communities and individuals to take action and look into renewable energy, green technologies and other sustainable initiatives to improve air quality. Air pollution contributes to asthma and heart disease, with 4.2 million deaths reported every year. In addition, 3.8 million deaths occur every year due to exposure to open fire in households whilst 50% of childhood pneumonia is due to the inhalation of polluted air, the UN states.

This World Environment Day, Fortude launched its global sustainability initiative, ‘Earth.Ocean.Life’, to help drive the 2019 theme to #beatairpollution. As its first step, employees across Fortude offices around the world were encouraged to plant a sapling and nurture it over the coming years. The goal of this initiative is not to simply plant a tree as a gesture of celebrating World Environment Day, but to have a long-lasting positive impact on the environment and help grow trees to reduce the carbon footprint in the communities we operate in.

Earth.Ocean.Life, will also help drive sustainable business practices across Fortude, with each global entity and more granular divisions looking at ways to help encourage environmentally friendly best practices.

Earth.Ocean.Life was launched with the promise to encourage bio diversity, on earth and in the oceans. The environment continues to suffer distress with the growth of air pollution, endangered species nearing extinction and the increase use of single-use plastic that continues to threaten sea life. The sustainability initiative will continue to drive more activities across the space of earth and ocean, to ensure in a little or big way that what we do has a lasting impact on planet earth.