Caramba!

Happy Earth Hour to everyone!   I am a proud participant of the global event, which happened more than an hour ago.    I thought of going around the Metro during Earth Hour to check out which establishments joined but Jovan pointed out that if we do that, we’d be using up gas for nothing.  So, we stayed home.  My family and I turned off all our lights, airconditioning, TV.  The only thing we left on was an electric fan, because of the intense heat.  We stayed at our lanai, listened to the radio (which used batteries), and played with Graham.  I greeted friends “Happy Earth Hour!” via text and was very happy to find out that they participated too.   Most of the replies were “Same to you!  It’s so dark!”.  One of my friends said I lit up the room with the text, which meant that only the celphone light was on in his room.  One of my friends was in a mall, and she said that a lot of establishments actually turned off their lights. 

I was pleasantly surprised to  find out yesterday that Starbucks was planning to support Earth Hour.  And today, I found out that SM Malls are supporters too.   That’s the way to go actually, tapping corporations with many establishments, because word of mouth will not be enough.  Our neighbors, both to the left and the right did not participate – I’m not sure if they don’t care or they didn’t know about it, I would like to believe it’s the latter.   

I’m not a hardcore ‘green’ person.  I don’t preach to my friends or ride my bike to work.  I don’t think I can give up my aircon and using the car.  But I’m aware of the destruction of the environment and global warming, and I know something has to be done.  This Earth Hour event is really, really awesome because in that one hour, we have saved a LOT of energy. One other thing we do is using reusable bags when we go to the grocery.  We bought 3 bags and our monthly grocery items all fit in these bags.  This is an awesome idea which I hope will be widespread soon because this means there will be less plastic bags used.   

I hope we can have Earth Hour more often.  Maybe 1 Earth Hour per month?  That would be so awesome.   

How about you?  How did you spend Earth Hour?