EVERY Earth Hour Filipinos switch off non-essential lights between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. This year, we did it again on Saturday. This international campaign encouraging people and businesses to turn off lights and other electric appliances is in support of the global call for action on climate change to reduce carbon footprint.
The Philippines has been an active participant of Earth Hour since 2009 and is consistently one of the biggest advocates of what has been dubbed as the worldâs largest grassroots movement for the environment. The World Wildlife Fund said the Philippines saved some 611 megawatts per hour of electricity when it first joined the campaign nine years ago, equivalent to shutting down one dozen coal-fired power plants.
Since our country is most vulnerable to climate change impacts, it is important for us to join international activities like Earth Hour because it concerns issues that are critical to our survival and development.
But we should do more than just switching off lights. Let us take the next step and live an environment-friendly lifestyle that goes beyond the hour, and on a continuing basis. Although the Earth Hour has been the most vivid showcase of our common cause, it is just one of the many ways by which we manifest our environment citizenship. Surely no less important are other pro-environment actions that we take between the annual Earth Hours â the 8,759 other hours of an ordinary year.
Earth Hour 2019 over the weekend focused on worldwide efforts to protect the environment from single-use plastics. According to the United Nations report âMarine Plastic Debris and Microplasticsâ, 80 percent of all pollution in the sea comes from land, including some eight million tons of plastic waste each year that have cost the lives of one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals. Moreover, it causes $8 billion in damage annually to marine ecosystems.
To halt the chemical and plastic contamination of our water bodies, particularly the oceans, the government has to adopt sweeping policy changes that will address the problem at source, incentivize single-use plastic reduction and disincentivize single-use plastic production. A national action plan (read: single-use plastic ban) will be needed to move our society away from our addiction to throw-away plastics.
Individually, we must minimize, if not stop, the reckless use and disposal of single-use plastics and adopt consumption choices and habits that will lessen the generation of plastic garbage. Yes, let us take next step and live an environment-friendly lifestyle that goes beyond the hour.
