Couple of days back, we had a very novel idea implemented throughout the world – Earth Hour. Everyone was requested to switch off electrical appliances, which most of us did. While watching the news related to this, I thought we have made AN EVENT out of it. Why otherwise having (or to be precise not having) Abhishek Bacchan’s video in the so called program is creating news? Anyways, people can create news out of anything, here; I wanted to talk about something else.
What is this Earth hour? And why are we talking about this?
We all know that our environment is facing biggest threat - climate change. (And it’s not only environment, but in turn all of us on Earth).
We already had Copenhagen conference where all the global leaders discussed how to control global warming, carbon emissions etc. (Unfortunately, Its outcome is subject of controversy and can be a subject of another article.) And why go on global stage - in our Persistent we have (?) Green Persistent movement is in progress. This means there is increasing level of awareness at every level about the environmental cause.
As per Wikipedia, Earth hour is organized to increase public AWARENESS about global warming and it is global call of action to every individual, business, school and community to take a stand against climate change. This necessarily means it’s a token, a symbol which is asking for more action from all of us.
So what can me - as an individual can do for this global cause. (I know that we have already gone through such appeals, and how we react to them. I don’t want to blame anyone, but we tend treat them as “GOOD TO HAVE FEATURES” and never make them “PRIORITY ITEMS” .
So here are few simple things which I tried to follow,
1. Never ever take a receipt of printed transaction on ATM unless you really need them. (Or you are keeping them in your daily account summary, and I am sure no one is doing it!!!)
I previously used to take them, have a look at them for few seconds and then throw them away. The information on this receipt was remaining balance, which I could have easily checked on screen of ATM machine. So basically I never needed them, but was printing them just as a habit. Once I stopped printing them, I tried observing people around me in ATM and the result wasn’t much different, almost everyone was doing same.
2. A colleague of mine has an Email tagline “Please consider the impact to the environment before printing this email”. This, although looks small, but consider around 10 lakh IT employees in India, if they fire even a single unnecessary print then its waste of 10 lakh pages.
3. Switching off unnecessary lights (I don’t think we even need to say this, this needs to be DEFAULT condition programmed in our brain)
4. I understand that machines take time in startup, but this doesn’t mean that I should never shut them down. I know many of us tend to just lock the machine and leave for the day. And while doing so we think, what will happen due my SINGLE machine. Here again consider its not only me or you, remember the number around 10 lakh!!!
This list can be never ending, we can find as many ways as we like, it’s just of our will. And of course we need to remember that earth hour is one of the initiatives to increase our will, our awareness, it’s just a token, a symbol, which we need to carry forward in our everyday life.
What is this Earth hour? And why are we talking about this?
We all know that our environment is facing biggest threat - climate change. (And it’s not only environment, but in turn all of us on Earth).
We already had Copenhagen conference where all the global leaders discussed how to control global warming, carbon emissions etc. (Unfortunately, Its outcome is subject of controversy and can be a subject of another article.) And why go on global stage - in our Persistent we have (?) Green Persistent movement is in progress. This means there is increasing level of awareness at every level about the environmental cause.
As per Wikipedia, Earth hour is organized to increase public AWARENESS about global warming and it is global call of action to every individual, business, school and community to take a stand against climate change. This necessarily means it’s a token, a symbol which is asking for more action from all of us.
So what can me - as an individual can do for this global cause. (I know that we have already gone through such appeals, and how we react to them. I don’t want to blame anyone, but we tend treat them as “GOOD TO HAVE FEATURES” and never make them “PRIORITY ITEMS” .
So here are few simple things which I tried to follow,
1. Never ever take a receipt of printed transaction on ATM unless you really need them. (Or you are keeping them in your daily account summary, and I am sure no one is doing it!!!)
I previously used to take them, have a look at them for few seconds and then throw them away. The information on this receipt was remaining balance, which I could have easily checked on screen of ATM machine. So basically I never needed them, but was printing them just as a habit. Once I stopped printing them, I tried observing people around me in ATM and the result wasn’t much different, almost everyone was doing same.
2. A colleague of mine has an Email tagline “Please consider the impact to the environment before printing this email”. This, although looks small, but consider around 10 lakh IT employees in India, if they fire even a single unnecessary print then its waste of 10 lakh pages.
3. Switching off unnecessary lights (I don’t think we even need to say this, this needs to be DEFAULT condition programmed in our brain)
4. I understand that machines take time in startup, but this doesn’t mean that I should never shut them down. I know many of us tend to just lock the machine and leave for the day. And while doing so we think, what will happen due my SINGLE machine. Here again consider its not only me or you, remember the number around 10 lakh!!!
This list can be never ending, we can find as many ways as we like, it’s just of our will. And of course we need to remember that earth hour is one of the initiatives to increase our will, our awareness, it’s just a token, a symbol, which we need to carry forward in our everyday life.
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