Earth Hour.. What does it Mean, What Can each of us do?

“There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.” Mother Theresa

I have had some interesting discussions in office as well on Twitter re: Earth Hour, after the Earth Hour , Power Shutdown voluntarily, on Mar 27. Most of these discussions were with people who thought Earth Hour was a waste of time, it achieved nothing & the whole thing was a farce. Bottom-line message from most of these discussions was that 1 hour of Earth Hour is not going to achieve anything nor save this planet. Some others in India had a grouse that there is a daily power cut for several hours and they have an automatic & forced Earth Hour… so what is the big deal of this 1 hour “show” annually??

To all these discussions my response was a simple message. ” Rome was not built in a day” and ” Every drop in the Ocean counts”.  Here are some simple things which we all can do. This list is by no means exhaustive and most of these are based on what  I try to do on a daily basis. I am still trying to add to this list as each day progresses….

1. Close the tap when you are brushing your teeth. There is no necessity to keep the tap open and let the water run till one finishes brushing their teeth. The same applies to whilst one is having a shower or washing dishes or  food.

2. Put off the light or fan or air-conditioner or TV and music system if you step out of the room, even if you intend to return within couple of minutes.

3. Do not order food more than you need and if you happen to make that mistake or sometimes unable to judge each one’s eating capacity amongst colleagues or friends, doggy bag the left over and make use of it.  This applies to cooking food at home as well.

4. Don’t  leave the engine of your car on, whilst waiting for somebody.

5. Wherever and whenever possible make it a point to walk or take the public transport rather than use one’s car.

It is not possible to feed every mouth, or donate to every charity or cause that seeks to bring food to the hungry, clean water to every village in India or to every affected part in Haiti.  But what we can seek to do is to conserve resources while using the same. Unfortunately nature’s resources is not a bottomless pit.

In my view all that Earth Hour tries to do every year, for the past 3 years or so is to create awareness re: nature’s resources, and how every person’s effort counts. Imagine if each of us conserved resources in our own small ways, and saved 1 hour’s worth of water, energy and food on a daily basis…. millions of people could be saved from the lack of these basic necessities.

Think!! and Please Act. Every effort, no matter how small counts and we can save our Earth and our Planet.

Is Mother Nature revolting… there have been one too many natural calamities this year ??? High time I, you and us started doing something…