Earth Hour 2013
Earth Hour will take place tonight, 23rd March 2013 at 8.30pm, while Earth Day will take place on 22nd April 2013.
What is Earth Hour? (From: Wikipedia)
Earth Hour is a worldwide event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and held towards the end of March annually, 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.
CA Technologies Earth Hour Fact Sheet
- Do you know that electronic products on standby power still consume power?
To be greener, please try to switch off electricity at the main power point.
- Asia’s paper consumption stood at 44%, close to half of the world’s consumption.
How about going paperless with a tablet to minimize printing? If you absolutely need to print, remember to print doublesided and recycle your paper. Talking about printing, do you know that printing with eco-friendly fonts can help you obtain a 31% savings in printing costs as lesser ink is used?3 Choose an ecofriendly font such as Century Gothic and Times New Roman over Arial and in a smaller size if there is a need to print materials for your own reference.
- Do you know that the energy saved from recycling an aluminium can versus manufacturing a new aluminium can from raw materials is enough to power a TV for three hours?
Consider recycling your beverage cans instead of throwing it away when you are in the office the next time.
- Do you know that air conditioning accounts for the majority of electricity usage in buildings and homes? For example, air-conditioning accounts for 60% of electricity bills of buildings in Singapore.
To be greener, set the air conditioning temperature in the office at an optimal temperature of 25°C, as every degree lower will add about 10% to the running costs with a higher consumption of energy.
- Each year, about 3.8 million trees are chopped for the production of 57 billion disposable pairs of chopsticks in China.
Reduce the amount of disposable waste by bringing your own set of reusable crockery and cutlery to the office. Cut back on waste generated by eating out instead of taking lunch away. Alternatively, opt to package the food in your reusable containers if there is a need to do so.
- Do you know that a person living in Asia Pacific produces an average of 4 metric tons of CO2 emission per year?
Reduce your carbon footprint by changing your commuting patterns to work – take the public transport instead of driving, or carpool with your colleagues. Always also consider video-conferencing rather than flying to different countries to meet with customers, partners and colleagues.
- It takes about 3 liters of oil and 1 kg of metal and plastic to produce a new toner cartridge.
Be greener by simply recycling these used cartridges, where you can save about half of the oil and keep a kilogram of metal and plastic out of the landfill, which will take at least 1,000 years to decompose.
- Do you know that LED bulbs last up to 10 times as long as compact fluorescent bulbs, and far longer than typical incandescent bulbs?
Consider changing to energy saving lighting fixtures for your office.
- Do you know that over 10 billion pens are thrown out worldwide each year?
Get on the green bandwagon by just choosing pens with refillable ink instead or purchase pens made of biodegradable plastics.
- Many of the commercial cleaning solutions, such as hand soap and floor detergents, are not environmentally friendly in terms of packaging and biodegradability. They also often contain toxins that can cause eye, skin and respiratory irritation.
Be greener by lobbying for eco-friendly cleaning solutions in your office!
