Earth Hour -- What Exactly Is The Point?

28 March 2009-- a date so widely publicized and promoted. This is the day where we human celebrate Earth Hour, where we are suppose to off all our lights at 8.30pm to 9.30pm as our vote to Mother Earth.

At first, I was fairly supportive of the idea, because it really raise awareness around the world. We even have a group of people walking around in the university campus promoting the event and from what I heard, a small parade going on in Westlake during the hour to encourage people to vote for Earth.

After that hour, I feel like this whole thing is just another useless thing. Now, don't get me wrong. I did say that this was a good idea, just that it didn't work.

I was back at my hometown during the weekend. My neighbours and coursemates were all very excited about this. They were even planning on how to celebrate Earth and all. I myself off everything, fan and laptop included. My neighbours did the same too. But when the 9.30pm mark passed, it was business as usual. All the lights were on, all the fans were on, my neighbour even had the air-con on after that mere one hour!! Prior to the event, I even got some really stupid questions like, "Off lights only hor? Fan no need hor?" and "Perfect, so dark... Can we watch movie?"

What, exactly, is the point of this Earth Hour when everyone got so excited and started talking about voting for Earth, but once the "curfew" passed, everyone go back to wasting energy? Isn't saving energy the whole point of Earth Hour? Earlier a friend of mine brought up an issue, where everyday, every hour, the citizens of Earth are wasting energy. Will one hour of darkness really bring a difference? I thought she was being sceptical, but she was right. (Please don't say 'I told you so,')

People, if you are so in love with earth, why don't you start by stop using so much plastic bags? Use shopping bags or carry them with your hands. And please don't waste money buying those black or blue rubbish bags... The chemicals and materials used to produced them isn't exactly energy saving, not to mention enviromentally polluting. Use the biodegradeble plastic bags from Tesco and Jusco instead, they are big enough. Next time, when you buy food or something, try not to use that much of plastic bags. I find it utterly pointless where you use a plastic bag when you buy one packet of rice, where you will eat in the next hour and throw the polystyrene box and the bag right after that. Worse still, do you really need that extra plastic bag to put your Gardenia or High Five bread in where the bread is already in a good enough plastic bag?

And speaking of hypocracy, any events or functions promoting environmental causes, please stop distributing coloured-printed paper flyers on colour paper, for God's sake. Those colour papers are made from trees and dyed with colouring chemicals. And the colour ink that you use for printing? The waste cannot be decomposed properly and does leave an impact on the environment.

People, if you are really concern about the environment, try to be environmentally friendly. A piece of paper has two sides, try not to throw them away after using only one side. And yellowish old paper is still paper. Use them!! And also, try not to waste water too. Turn the tap off when you are brushing your teeth, or not washing something.

If you really love Earth, you don't need an Earth Hour to cast your votes.
If you really love Earth enough, every hour of your life is Earth Hour and your actions will speak louder as a vote.

PS: I do not deny that at times, I waste energy too. But I try to be as Green as possible. The steps suggested above are just a few things that we can do for Earth. If this post offended anyone, I sincerely apologised. This is purely my opinion. But seriously, will one hour of darkness make a difference to a lifetime of energy-wasting habits?