Earth Hour 2015
The Town of Caledon has actively participated in Earth Hour since 2008. For this year’s campaign on March 28 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. the Town is ramping up preparations to turn off unnecessary lighting in an effort to raise climate change awareness.
2014 was the most successful Earth Hour campaign both globally and locally. Globally, the 2014 campaign broke all records with hundreds of millions of participants across 162 countries and 7,000 cities. Locally, Hydro One reported an estimated 7.5% decrease in electric demand resulting from local resident and business participation (0.5% above the 2013 results).
“The Town of Caledon is pleased to be participating in Earth Hour for the seventh consecutive year displaying our dedication to the environment. This event shows that the simple activities we can do each day to reduce our energy use have a major impact.”
This year, on Saturday, March 28, 2015 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. many Town Facilities will be shutting off the lights in support of the hour including:
– Lights will be going out at Caledon Village Place, Alton Library and Community Room, Mayfield Recreation Centre, Lloyd Wilson Arena, Caledon Centre for Recreation and Wellness, Rotary Place, Town Hall, Fire Administration Building and the Pan Am Equestrian Park.
– Reduced energy use at Caledon Community Complex and Albion Bolton United Community Centre.
– Within Caledon, the Town has initiated numerous measures to go beyond the hour. Last year, the Town passed an idling bylaw to help limit the amount of unnecessary emissions from vehicles.
– Staff also completed a significant update to the Town’s Corporate Energy and Environmental Plans.
Lastly, the Town won two awards (Building Performance-Biggest Energy Reduction and Team Excellence-Capital/Operating Project) through “Race to Reduce” an initiative led by Civic Action, recognizing Town Hall’s significant reduction in energy use, resulting from a re-commissioning and engagement and awareness exercises.
Earth Hour originated in Sydney Australia in an effort to take action on global climate change and quickly grew to become one of the largest climate change movements globally. Last year, the movement inspired over 18 crowd funding projects supporting initiatives such as projects to help save the Great Barrier Reef to a “Blue Sky” campaign in China focused on crowdsourcing solutions to air pollution.
For more information about the Town’s environment and climate change strategies, visit www.caledon.ca/environment. To learn more about Earth Hour, and how you can participate, visit www.earthhour.org.
