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UOW to Participate in Earth Hour

On Saturday, March 28, 2009, at 8:30 p.m, the University of Wollongong will be taking part in Earth Hour, sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. We’ll be joining tens of millions of concerned citizens and corporations in calling for action to save our planet for future generations.

To assist the University in its involvement in Earth Hour please ensure that you

• Turn off lights as you leave each evening (or as you leave if you come in over the weekend)
• Turn off at the power point any non-essential equipment in the office and other work areas within your building as you leave every evening. Don't forget the meeting rooms, laboratories, workshops, store rooms and kitchen areas.  Turn off equipment such as photocopiers, printers, camera docking stations, mobile phone and battery chargers, heaters, fans, TV’s,  radios, toasters, sandwich makers, microwaves, kettles and coffee machines. 
• Turn off equipment (such as data projectors), fans, air conditioning and lights in lecture and other teaching rooms.  In particular, make sure that these are switched off if you are the last to use them for the day.   
• For computer equipment, turn off your monitor when you are away from your desk for more than 15 minutes (e.g lunch break, meetings and when you leave for the day).
• Avoid (if possible) coming in to work at the University during Earth Hour -  Saturday 28th March between 8:30pm and 9:30pm.   If you do need to be at the University during this time be mindful that Earth Hour is on and only have the lighting and equipment that you need switched on.
• Remember some equipment still uses power when turned off.  Turning the item off at the power point will ensure that the item is actually off and not using power in standby or sleep mode.

Make a difference to the future of our planet by making energy savings not just for Earth Hour but every day.

As individuals you can also sign up to participate. You can learn more about Earth Hour at http://www.earthhourau.org/, and you can sign up to participate at http://www.earthhourau.org/signup

More than 50 million people in 400 cities around the world took part in Earth Hour 2008. The lights went out at Sydney’s Opera House, Rome’s Coliseum, the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. Even the Google homepage went dark for the day. Many major corporations took part including HP, Coca-Cola, and Morgan Stanley.

This year, Earth Hour will be even bigger. In Australia cities large and small have said they’ll participate.  They will join international cities such as Auckland, Beijing, Bogota, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Kiev, Kuala Lumpur, Lisbon, London, Manila, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, Oslo, Paris, Rome, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney, Toronto, Vancouver, and Warsaw.  The various participants include other Universities around the world.

You can view WWF’s video about Earth Hour 2009 at www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjWD8pbK5t8 to get a sense of the magnitude of this event.

I hope you’ll join us in uniting with the world to make a difference for our planet. Don’t forget—March 28th at 8:30pm, turn out, take action.