Earth Hour, Earth Day, and why we switch the lights off

On the last Saturday of March, and again on 22 April, the lights go off at Colombo Court between half past eight and half past nine in the evening. The lobby, the garden, the poolside and the roof are lit by candles and oil lamps instead. Guests tend to remember it. The pool by candlelight is the best the garden ever looks.

Two dates, one idea

Earth Hour is the WWF’s annual switch-off, held on a Saturday in late March since 2007, when Sydney turned its lights off for an hour. It has grown into the largest single gesture for the environment in the world, and its point is not the electricity saved in sixty minutes but the reminder that the rest of the year is where the saving happens.

Earth Day, on 22 April, is older, first held in 1970. It is a day of action rather than a gesture: clean-ups, planting, and the annual reckoning of how the world is doing. The news on that front is rarely comfortable, but there are reasons for hope. The growth in renewable energy over the last decade has been faster than anyone forecast, and it is the reason the worst projections have not come true.

The rest of the year

A candlelit hour is easy. What we are prouder of is the ordinary Tuesday: solar-heated water, LED lighting, inverter air-conditioning in the rooms and none at all in the public areas, which are cooled by the garden. Rainwater collected for the plants. Drinking water bottled in glass on site. Waste separated. And, every year, the hotel’s carbon footprint measured and offset, which is what made Colombo Court South Asia’s first CarbonNeutral® city hotel.

Join in

If you are staying with us on either date, come down to the garden at half past eight. There is nothing to do except sit by the water with a drink and look at the candles, which turns out to be enough. And if you are wondering what a carbon neutral hotel actually does on the other 363 days, we have written it down.