Earth Hour is an annual event organized worldwide by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) towards the end of March with the main objective of encouraging households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour to raise awareness about the need to take action on climate change. The event, conceived by WWF and Leo Burnett, first took place in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights. Following Sydney’s lead, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008. In 2013, as the clock counted down towards Earth Hour at 8:30 pm on Saturday, 23rd March, members of Earthlink NTU and numerous volunteers pledged not only to go beyond the hour “! but also make earnest efforts to rally more support for the green campaign this year.
In direct collaboration with WWF, Earthlink NTU enthusiastically lent a helping hand during the campaign as well as actively participated in the Dance2Power “! event to raise awareness on energy conservation at The Float @ Marina Bay from 4:00 pm to 10:30 pm. Volunteers were asked to dance on a first of its kind kinetic pad that converts the kinetic energy of people danceing on them to electrical energy, which was one of the main highlights of this year “!s program. 76,530 Watts of power was harnessed via the act of dancing by the conclusion of the event.
In addition to active participation in events organized over the duration of Earth Hour Singapore, Earthlink NTU set up booths for the Eco-Carnival at the venue in an attempt to garner more attention to the importance of conserving energy and how small contributions from a large number of individuals could make a significant difference. The notion of collecting of pledges using glow in the dark pens which would then be displayed during Earth Hour as well as interactive games proved to be captivating and were extremely well received.
Another crucial component of the Earth Hour 2013 campaign, was to make a contribution towards saving power by collecting pledges from students to turn their air-conditioner temperature up by 1 degree. Earthlink NTU successfully manages to collect over 200 pledges signed by fellow NTU students vowing to make a sincere effort to increase the air conditioner temperature by 1 degree.
The primary objective of Earth Hour is to propagate awareness about the importance of preserving energy for a sustainable future. Earthlink NTU was successful in holding attractive booths as well as in urging fellow students to make a vow to lower their energy consumption, proving to be instrumental in bringing about a change in the lifestyle of the NTU population as well Singapore residents as a whole.