Restaurant Industry Observes Earth Hour 2009!

This weekend, I dined at a very nice restaurant…in the dark. We dined by candlelight, actually, but it was not a romantic gesture.

On Saturday, the U.S. (and most of the world!) observed a relatively new, yet highly important event: Earth Hour. Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia in 2007, when 2.2 million homes & businesses switched off their lights for one hour. The message sent out by the residents of Sydney was so powerful, it began to reach across the globe. 2009 anticipated that more than 1 billion people, globally, would observe Earth Hour.

As anticipated, 2009 was a complete success with restaurants, businesses, and organizations around the world turning off their lights for 1 hour, from 8:30pm - 9:30pm local time. Many restaurants around the world invited guests to dine by candlelight during this time, providing an hour of energy-savings as well as a romantic dinner setting.

One restaurant who followed through on their promise to promote Earth Hour was McDonald’s. The McDonald’s restaurants around the world participated in numerous ways, from turning off road signs to turning off any type of non-essential lighting on both the interior and exterior of their building.

The restaurant industry is taking great strides to become more eco-friendly, with this being a large scale effort. Thanks to all of the restaurants, businesses, and organizations that took part!