Earth Hour is a global movement showing that small actions make a big difference. We have some tips on how to make your one hour genuinely count.
For 19 years, one hour in March has quietly reminded the world that small actions matter.
What started in 2007 as a simple lights-out event in Sydney, Australia, has become the largest grassroots environmental movement on the planet.
In 2025, participants across 118 countries dedicated more than three million hours to the Earth. That’s three million hours spent staring at darkness, thinking about why we left the lights on in the first place.
This year, on Saturday, March 28, at 8:30 pm, everyone around the world is invited to join the global blackout for “The Biggest Hour for Earth”.
Here’s how to make your one hour genuinely count:
Spend time outdoors
Your phone won’t die if you leave it inside for 60 minutes. Step outside and actually see the world beyond your walls.
Take a sunset stroll, wander through a nearby park, or sit quietly in your garden. If you’re feeling ambitious, organise a starlit walk with friends.
Research shows that even 20 minutes in nature lowers stress and improves your mood, so technically, Earth Hour is self-care disguised as activism.
Eat for the Earth
You can switch off your lights all you want, but if your dinner is a meat-heavy feast shipped from the other side of the globe, Mother Nature might side-eye you.
Try a plant-based or low-impact meal. Legumes, grains, and seasonal vegetables produce far less carbon than meat-heavy dishes.
Even a simple chickpea curry or roasted vegetable stir-fry makes a difference. Supporting local sustainable restaurants also keeps food miles low and your conscience clean.
Clean up your space
Grab gloves, a bag and make your neighbourhood or your nearest park, beach or river look less like a trash heap.
Litter isn’t just ugly but it also kills wildlife and pollutes water. Even small community clean-ups have a measurable impact: WWF research shows that removing everyday litter from rivers and streets prevents toxins from entering ecosystems.
Plus, it doubles as a mini workout, so you can call it multi-tasking!
Reduce waste at home
Take the hour to rethink daily habits. Switch off unused electronics, reuse containers, ditch single-use plastics and finally tackle that pile of old receipts, coffee cups, and paper towels.
Small changes, like using cloth bags, keeping a compost bin or cutting down on packaging, add up over time.
Your home will look tidier, your bills might drop, and you’ll feel like you’re actually doing something meaningful while binge-watching nature documentaries.
Get inspired
Don’t just sit in the dark staring at your walls. Watch “A Life On our Planet“, “Seaspiracy” or “Cowspiracy” (all available on Netflix) and see why you should care about every leaf, coral and cow.
Prefer reading? Try “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells, “Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet” by George Monbiot or “Zero Waste Home” by Bea Johnson.
If you really want to be green for Earth Hour, go vegan
If you truly want to combat climate change, cross off meat, eggs and dairy foods from your shopping list. Foods derived from animals, whether eaten by candlelight or not, require more resources and cause more greenhouse gas emissions than plant-based foods do.
Each year, humans kill 60 billion land animals for food – that’s about 7 million animals every hour. All these animals produce massive amounts of waste, which releases powerful greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. The livestock sector is the single largest source of both methane and nitrous oxide, greenhouses gases that are 25 and 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, respectively.
A person who follows a vegan lifestyle produces the equivalent of 50% less carbon dioxide than a meat-eater and uses 1/11th of the oil, 1/13th of the water and 1/18th of the land, which is why the United Nations has stated that a global shift towards a vegan diet is essential to combat the worst effects of climate change.
Get into the kitchen and cook a vegan meal this Earth Hour. It’s the best thing any of us can do for the environment as well as for animals.
Original source: https://iol.co.za / https://www.theguardian.com
