Issue 1 2009 > It's Lights Out for Earth Hour
Corporate Social Responsibility
It's Lights Out for Earth Hour
Last Saturday's Earth Hour encouraged households and businesses worldwide to shut off nonessential lights and electrical appliances between 8:30 and 9:30 pm to raise awareness of energy consumption, its effect on the environment and the need to take action on climate change.
General Manager Louis Pimentel in office with lights out
Crown Tokyo's lights and computers turned off during lunch
Many of Crown's staff members were involved and participated in this important event. Jim Thompson, chairman of Crown Worldwide noted, "It was a relatively simple initiative to execute but one that may go a long way in raising awareness about the need for everyone to join together and conserve energy; and to emphasize that every little bit helps and that every individual can make a difference."
Below are a couple of examples of how the Crown worldwide team participated in this important initiative.
Crown Wine Cellars in Hong Kong was open on Saturday night, hosting clients at its club house. Chairman Jim Thompson–there that night with his wife Sally–describes what took place.
"On that night three separate birthday parties were being held. All the participants agreed that we should shut the lights off at 8:30 pm and they celebrated by candlelight. Everyone was really enjoying eating by candlelight–so much so that we left the lights off for the rest of the evening! Perhaps we should do this for an hour every weekend."
Crown Tokyo is not open on Saturday nights and therefore decided to turn lights off for an hour on Friday–the day before Earth Hour. "We turned off all of the lights in the office and shut down our computers during our lunch break," noted Rie Murakami. "In fact, we turn off some of the lights during our lunch break every day, but on that day, with the cooperation of the staff, we were able to turn off all of the lights."
Throughout the world, there was widespread darkening of famous monuments and attractions such as Egypt's Pyramids, Paris' Eiffel Tower, New York's Times Square, Beijing's Olympic venues, the Sydney Opera House and any many others. The Mayor of Bangkok was actively promoting the event in Thailand. In Beijing, bars with terraces had telescopes set up for star gazing. A Mexico City hotel encouraged its guests to participate and hosted an outdoor candlelight dinner cooked without using high-energy equipment. Large sections of many other worldwide cities turned their lights off. In response to this event, Edward Hogan from Crown China said, "Based on the response I saw in Beijing, this is something that people are really getting behind and next year will be even better. People are starting to think about how what we do affects the environment."
In the spirit of Earth Hour and its other environmental actions, Crown UK & Ireland has decided to encourage all of its offices to "turn off lights" for as long as is practicable for one day each month, from April through September this year. This group will calculate the kg of carbon–and electricity costs–saved, with a target of one tonne over the six days.