That’s a Wrap on Climate Week NYC 2025

Climate Week NYC 2025 took place September 21–28, 2025, and brought thousands of people from around the world to New York City to activate around the climate crisis. Climate Week NYC is the world’s largest annual climate-focused gathering outside of the annual UN Climate Change conference or COP, with more than 1,000 events held virtually and in person around the city every third week of September, alongside world leaders gathering for the annual UN General Assembly (UNGA).

Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC) staff members took part, as did many of our Executive Advisory Board (EAB) Members, Notables, Scientific Advisors, Organizational and Business Members, allies, and Youth Ambassadors.

Helen Clarkson, CEO of Climate Group, the primary organizer of Climate Week NYC, set the scene with her opening remarks, nodding to this year’s theme: “We’re here to Power On.” With climate-focused panels and actions focused on solutions in the face of crisis to keep the movement energized and effective, Climate Week NYC is a call to adapt to the ever-changing impacts of climate change in our modern world. Keep reading for PPC’s Climate Week highlights from NYC.

NYU Langone Plastics and Human Health Symposium

Bjorn Beeler, Barbra (Barbie) Weber, Jane Muncke, and ministers from South Africa, Norway, and Brazil on stage at the NYU Plastics and Human Health symposium. Photo credit: theendocrinesociety on Instagram.

The NYU Langone Health Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards hosted its second annual scientific symposium on Plastics and Human Health on September 22, in partnership with A Plastic Planet. The event launched a day after the publication of an alarming medical review, in which experts concluded that childhood exposure to plastic chemicals in household items poses serious and growing health risks that can extend into adulthood.

The symposium featured clinicians, scientists, stakeholders, and other healthcare professionals who presented and participated in discussions about the latest research on microplastics and human health, as well as policy developments and the role of regulations in curbing the growing public health crisis of plastic pollution. Breakouts were also held to discuss specific research and developments on policy and the ongoing UN Plastics Treaty talks.

Our findings point to plastic’s role in the early origins of many chronic diseases that reverberate into adolescence and adulthood. If we want kids to stay healthy and live longer, then we need to get serious about limiting the use of these materials.

— Dr. Leonardo Trasande, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, via NYU Langone Health NewsHub

PlasticFreeLand

PlasticFreeLand, an experiential walk-through showcase of the materials and products that prove nature and human-safe materials are already with us, debuted earlier this year during London Climate Week. It was installed in NYC in partnership with NYU Langone. While many of our modern societal systems have been designed to support wasteful single-use plastics, PlasticFreeLand shows us that there’s a better way forward for our health and planet when we tap into regenerative materials and systems. PlasticFreeLand’s featured “solutionist” businesses included PPC Business Members Cruz Foam, Mover, Notpla, and Sway, as well as Dōs, Droply, Impermea Materials, Purified Footwear, Shellworks, TerraSafe, and many others.

The only competition is the status quo.

— Sian Sutherland, CoFounder & Chief Changemaker, A Plastic Planet + Plastic Free

Plastic is a problem, let’s not recycle the problem.

— Nicholas Rochat, Founder, Mover

Planetary Guardians Launch the 2025 Planetary Health Check at The New School

The Planetary Guardians are a group of thought leaders, activists, and experts who elevate science through the annual Planetary Health Check, held a special event at The New School to launch the 2025 Planetary Health Check. The Planetary Health Check is the most comprehensive, science-based global initiative dedicated to measuring and maintaining the Earth system. 

Planetary Guardians Xiye Bastida, PPC Youth Ambassador; Dr. Sylvia Earle, PPC Scientific Advisor; and the late Dr. Jane Goodall were among key speakers at the event. 

This year’s Planetary Health Check, an annual report on the state of our planet, showed that our oceans have acidified to serious levels, with ocean acidification being the 7th of 9 planetary boundaries humanity has breached. Planetary boundaries are science-based guardrails that ensure the Earth’s health; if all are breached, humanity risks irreparable damage to our home planet.

On a hopeful note, while we are out of the “safe zone,” we are not yet in the “red zone” of no return, according to the Planetary Guardians. There is still time to act.

Nature takes time and a tree does not rush to grow.

— Xiye Bastida

It is now proven by science that being in nature is beneficial to our physical and mental health.

— Dr. Jane Goodall

Sun Day for Solar Energy

Environmental activists Bill McKibben and Denis Hayes relaunched Sun Day on Sunday, September 21, 2025, dedicating the day to celebrating solar and wind power leading the transition to clean energy. The event featured speakers discussing the need for clean energy and the harms of fossil fuels, including PPC Notable Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., as well as uplifting singing by PPC Notable Antonique Smith, founders of Climate Revival.

Solutions House 2025 

Solutions House 2025 held many excellent sessions, including From Bollywood to Love Island: Stories that Reach Beyond the Climate Bubble. India is home to 1.5 billion people, an entire fifth of the world’s population. Bollywood films are a unique media market, with a notable influence on Indian social issues. Using the “Moral Foundation Theory” (that people need to see people like them modeling behaviors to make them more acceptable), this event suggests that Bollywood is a powerful medium for cultural change within the entertainment industry.

The event was moderated by Dr. Anirudh Tiwathia, Director of Behavioral Source at the Rare Entertainment Lab, and featured Meredith Milton, Creative Director at “Rewrite the Future” NRDC, and Rodrigo Brandão, Story Justice Communications at GSCC. It resonated with PPC, as we know “life imitates art” from our Flip the Script on Plastics campaign, in which we seek to eliminate single-use plastic from Hollywood storylines and sets.

During another great session held at Solutions House 2025, PPC Notable Member and actress Alysia Reiner gave a shout-out to PPC and made a pitch to Anna Hagen, writer on the television show The Diplomat:

“I’m pitching something out of the blue right now, which is that I work with Plastic Pollution Coalition, and one of the things we talk about is flipping the script on plastic and taking plastic out of sets, not just off screen, but on screen. So a great example of that is Hacks, where they wrote it in, and it became a funny thing of not using plastic water bottles. So I invite The Diplomat to think about that too.“ 

In response to a question about policy change, UK MP Katie White OBE emphasized the limitations of binary thinking, urging a shift toward more nuanced conversations that reflect our complex realities. She noted that solid policy ideas often stem from creative approaches. Hagen added that storytelling plays a role in this shift, encouraging writers to depict the world as they truly see it. In this way, stories become inherently climate stories, grounded in lived experience without being patronizing. She introduced the idea of “protopias” (hopeful, livable futures) as a way to balance realism with optimism in narratives about the climate crisis.

Al Gore unveiled a new online tool, Climate TRACE, to track pollution and help users visualize emissions, which are the “leading contributor to the global disease burden,” according to a Lancet report. The former Vice President announced the exciting new development on stage at the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Beyond Petrochemicals hosted gathering during Climate Week. 

Climate TRACE “makes the microscopic threat of harmful particulate matter (PM2.5) visible to all. The tool shows the flow of air pollution plumes out of sources that contribute to the climate crisis and into the air that 1.6 billion people in more than 2,500 urban areas breathe.”

Bye Bye Plastic Launches Zero Plastic Club NY

Bye Bye Plastic launched Zero Plastic Club NYC, at Marketplace of the Future. Zero Plastic Club NYC is an initiative calling on NYC nightclubs to eliminate plastic pollution, starting with leading club House of Yes to mentor other clubs, creating guides and case studies. They premiered their video and immersive installation “What You See Is NOT All There Is,” designed to show the hidden impact of plastics on health, culture, and the environment. The Zero Plastic Club France has already eliminated 323,983 plastic bottles from French nightclubs, and the initiative aims to do the same in NYC.

Additionally, Black Oak Collective, which facilitates networking for Black environmental leaders to facilitate nonprofit building and career pathways, presented “Uniforms for the Unwritten Future,” an Afrofuturist and sustainable fashion show. The show featured circular, ethically produced, and upcycled designs created by Black designers. The works “dream beyond disposability” and emphasize that the movement to end plastic pollution and climate change are not only about crisis, but are also about creativity and resilience.

Take Action

There is no partisanship here, we all have a spoon’s worth of nanoplastics in our brains.

— Sophia Bush, Actress, Entrepreneur, Activist, Organizing for Our Lives Panel

This year’s Climate Week NYC was packed with more plastic pollution-related events and developments than ever before, giving us hope that there is real progress for the intersecting plastic, climate, justice, and health crises towards solutions. Business leaders and investors must continue to link plastic and climate, and “power on” for plastic pollution solutions, too. Despite being up against fossil fuel and petrochemical industry giants, individuals and communities are coming together to create a healthier and more just, equitable world. 

Please sign our petition, telling world leaders to take a strong stance at the next UN Plastics Treaty negotiations.