EARTH HOUR

Posted by Mike Rigby

Earth Hour (as I’m sure you know) is a WWF fronted, global grass-roots movement encouraging individuals, businesses and governments around the world to take positive actions for the environment by switching off their lights for one hour. Since it’s inception – right here in Sydney over 5 years ago – it has flourished into a truly global event, and the largest campaign of it’s kind ever. In the last 24 hours, over 138 countries and billions people have switched off their none essential lighting between the local hours of 8.30 – 9.30pm.

The event isn’t without it’s criticism and there is an interesting article on National Geographic debating the point of it all. This year, In counter to some suggestions that encouraging people to turn off for just one hour a year, actually trivialises the problem. The campaign founders are asking participants to think beyond the hour and to make permanent changes to their lifestyles, by using less energy all year round.

Incidentally, the original idea was the brainchild of a thinktank including creatives from advertising agency Leo Burnett Sydney. So, here is just one example of how creative thinking can do more than just shift product. Two billion people talking about a more sustainable lifestyle can only be a good thing.

Posted on Sunday, March 27th, 2011 at 10:26 am by Mike Rigby. Filed under CREATIVE THINKING, ENVIRONMENT. Follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.