Earth Hour is a worldwide movement for the planet initiated by the Australian World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Sydney in 2007. It was started as a lights off event to make stand against climate change.
Earth Hour 2018 – Bačka Topola 8:29 pm (Photo: Sihelnik József)
Since then, the event is held worldwide and held towards the end of March annually, encouraging individuals, communities, households and businesses to turn off their non essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour as a symbol for their commitment to the planet. This is the most massive event which involves more than two billion volunteers.
The Earth Hour movement grew up to 7000 cities and towns from 180 countries and provinces which took part in this action, more than 90 capitals and nine of ten most populated cities in the world. Let’s mention just some of them: New York, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, London, Beijing, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, Toronto, Sydney, Nairobi, Dubai. More than 1600 landmarks and sights turned off their non essential lighting for Earth Hour, including Pyramids of Giza, Eiffel Tower, Acropolis of Athens, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Colosseum and Empire State Building. In 2020 the Earth Hour was held online for the first time and in spite of the numerous challenges it became the largest Earth Hour event so far, with 190 countries that took part and more than 4.7 billion posts on social networks.
Earth Hour 2018 – Bačka Topola 8:30, pm (Photo: Sihelnik József)
Now already traditional Earth Hour “60” logo represents the 60 minutes of Earth Hour where we focus on the impact we are having on our planet and take positive action to address the environmental issues we face. In 2011 the “60” logo became “60 +” representing the fact that people should take care of the planet all the time, during the whole year, not just during Earth Hour’s 60 minutes. From 2018, conservation of natural values and sustainable way of life are also included into the Earth Hour events.
In 2009 Earth Hour was organized for the first time in Serbia. In 2019 number of participants grew up to 90 cities and municipalities, 168 schools and 80 NGOs.
This year Bačka Topola is going to be part of this global event again, because Arcus Ecological Association joins to Earth Hour for the eighth time. Bearing in mind the current epidemiological situation we invite you to join us in this action from your homes. Let’s think about our planet and turn off for an hour all the unnecessary lights and electrical appliances on Saturday 27th March 2021 at 8:30 pm.
Let’s turn off the lights in our homes in as larger number as we can!