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31. März 2014

SA joins global initiative to save power

With the lights switched off for an hour on Saturday night, South Africa reconfirmed her global citizenship towards the green revolution movement. WITH the lights switched off for an hour on Saturday night, South Africa reconfirmed her global citizenship towards the green revolution movement.

The country joined more than 7000 cities and 164 countries around the world to observe Earth Hour, an environmental initiative aimed at encouraging ordinary citizens and industries to consume less electricity.

More importantly for South Africa, this year’s main event was hosted in Cape Town, following a bidding process in which the city beat all those participated around the world.

Earth Hour was initiated by an international environmental and conservation organisation, World Wildlife Fund For Nature (WWF) in Australia in 2007, but has since become an international event.

Eskom said yesterday that the country saved 575 megawatts of electricity when participants heeded a call to switch off the lights between 8.30pm and 9.30pm on Saturday evening.

The country’s power generator said the energy saved at the weekend was enough to power a city that was the size of Polokwane in Limpopo.

Eskom’s spokesman Andrew Etzinger encouraged consumers to continue the initiative by switching off the lights in the rooms they were not using.

WWF has launched an online promise page in which users are encouraged to make a promise during this month on how they would contribute in saving the planet.

|+| The Sowetan

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