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Kolbi wireless subscribers all over Costa Rica received the following text message from the quasi-governmental electric utility ICE today:
It’s time we put a stop to energy waste. Join us today, March 31st at 8:30 pm in Earth Hour. ICE, saving energy right by your side.
The message is part of the worldwide event Earth Hour, organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Earth Hour started in 2007, when metropolitan residents of Sidney in Australia turned off their lights for one hour on March 31st. Marketing of the event was undertaken by the prominent advertising agency Leo Burnett and the The Sidney Morning Herald Newspaper.
The first Earth Hour was estimated to have reduced about 10 percent of energy consumption. In the following years, Earth Hour was joined by several other major metropolitan areas around the world. The Philippines and Vietnam are two nations that have been notable for their participation in Earth Hour. In 2010, Vietnam reported a drop of about 500,000 kilowatt hours during the event.
Costa Rica’s participation in Earth Hour over the years has been a far cry from the dedication shown by the Philippines and Vietnam. Earth Hour 2011 coincided with the inauguration of our brand new National Stadium, an exercise in poor planning. Around the time that many cities around the planet were dimming electrical lights and switching to candle illumination, Alvaro Saborio, the star football striker of the Real Salt Lake in the American Major League Soccer, scored the historical first goal against China as millions of Ticos celebrated crowded around their television sets.
Earth Hour 2012 promises to be a more engaging affair in Costa Rica in comparison to last year. ICE has been doing a lot more in terms of educating Ticos about energy saving than today’s text message. Over the last few years, ICE has been giving consumers frank advice and useful energy-saving tips, such as hanging laundry out to dry in the sun instead of using electric dryers, leaving a clearance of 10 centimeters between the back of refrigerators and the kitchen wall, using 20-watt and 1200 lumen fluorescent light bulbs that consume 3 kWh per month, and more. You can also figure out how much energy your home appliances burn at ICE’s website.
Earth Hour 2012 does not enjoy the support of the government in Costa Rica. Speaking to online news site Costa Rica Hoy, the Minister of the Environment Rene Castro indicated that “We have enough initiatives going on that require our attention at this time”, making reference to the Limpia tu Huella nationwide carbon footprint reduction campaign and the Blue Ecologic Flag program.
Tico rock band Akasha is a Latin American ambassador for WWF and Earth Hour 2012. The band has pledged to plant 500 trees and give a free concert if fans download their new song “El Espejo” (The Mirror) at least 50,000 times from their website.
