Earth Hour 2009

Earth Hour 2009

Earth Hour was originally conceived as an event for people to turn off their lights for one hour during that day. It was first started in Sydney, Australia in 2007. The simple but brilliant idea caught the attention of other people of the world, and in 2008, it went global. Over 35 countries participated in the 2008 iteration, with an estimated 50 million people participating in that event. In 2009, the idea came to Malaysian shores. I’ve seen various TV and radio advertisements urging people to switch off their lights from 8:30pm – 9:30pm. There was as much talk about it on the Internet.

Of the Malaysian free TV channels, 8TV was the sole TV broadcaster that participated in the event by temporarily stopping broadcast during that hour. We all know that time is actually the prime time, where TV braodcasters gets the highest number of viewers of the day, which in turns translate into the time slot in which advertisements are the most expensive and where the money is for them. Despite that, 8TV has shown great social responsibility effort by participating in Earth Hour and also continuously airing awareness advertisements for the past few days. Kudos to 8TV!

I was not aware of Earth Hour last year, but this year I got to know the event from working on some of Editorial Board’s articles, and I did my part too. I’ve got my parents to turn off not just all the lights, but also nearly other non-essential electrical appliances and devices. The only thing that stayed on during Earth Hour in my house was the fridge, and a fan in the hall. Everything else got switched off on the socket level.

Oh, and did you know that, according to one of the Earth Day ad on National Geographic Channel Earth Day advert, 75% of the power usage in the average house actually comes from stuff that’s in standby mode / suspended mode / sleep mode? The best way to eliminate this source of power leech is to actually turn it off a the socket. Better still, unplug it from the wall socket. Now that fact really surprised me!

I remember seeing the Earth Hour advertisement somewhere, which started off with one person asking this question: I am only one person, what can I do? Which is a really good question. What can I do?

I’ve started looking around for all the things that I use. Generally I think my family keeps rather ok habits of being environmentally friendly. All the lightings in my house are Compact Florecent Lights (CFLs), we use mostly glass and ceramic containers for all of our food stuff, showers instead of tubs, uses fabric shopping bags instead of taking plastic bags, fans instead of air conditioners… etc. Observing all the things that I do, I think the one thing in my daily life that uses a lot of power is my computing habit.

I turn off my main desktop when I’m not using it, but I do keep one of my rig online almost 24/7; downloading stuff to play with (some beta/free software, not games), and for it to act as a server for various purposes. To conserve power, I’ve reused an old, underpowered laptop. It is a Core 2 Duo Centrino, which is one of the more power efficient processor class out there. If you run a torrent box and keeps it on 24/7, I do suggest that you find a power efficient platform, like a netbook or so. I think I should study my usage patterns are start to re-consider all the equipments that I have.

Did you participate in Earth Hour 2009? Please do share any of your power saving tactics that you do on a day to day basis.