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24th Mar 2018

Why you need to turn your lights off at 8:30pm tonight

Do your bit for Earth Hour

Reuben Pinder

We all need to do our bit.

The battle against climate change is getting tougher by the day, and we should all do what we can to limit our carbon footprint, as hard as that can be.

Switching off lights when they’re not being used, recycling plastics, little things like that can go a long way if we all make an effort. With this in mind, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) want everyone to turn their lights off  and put all electronic devices away for an hour starting at 8:30pm on Saturday night as part of their Earth Hour campaign.

Image result for turn off light gif

The idea is obviously to save energy and make people wary of how much energy they normally use. The event started in Sydney, Australia, back in 2007. Since then the movement has gained momentum and now includes more than 7,000 towns and cities worldwide.

It’s easy to think that you can’t make a difference, but according to WWF Thailand, Bangkok’s electricity usage reduced by 73.34 megawatts during the hour – saving 41.6 tonnes of carbon monoxide from being produced.

Dublin Airport also announced that it will be dimming and switching off lights tonight:

It will feel strange to not use any electricity for an hour, but there are other ways to entertain oneself. Somehow, they survived before the internet, we can too.