Earth Hour 2012 - March 31, 2012

BOMA San Francisco Members:

Earth Hour is an ongoing annual event that raises awareness of humankind’s continued and unintended negative impact on the environment. Throughout the world, sustainability-focused operations and lifestyles are increasingly becoming standard procedure in both our personal and professional lives. Potential climate change and the reduction of natural resources continue to affect global Real Estate on a massive scale and are influencing our operational decisions on a daily basis. These decisions have both economic and life-style impacts.

BOMA San Francisco urges it's members to participate in this year’s Earth Hour, scheduled for Saturday, March 31, 2012 from 8:30 pm until 9:30 pm, local daylight savings time. During this hour, the goal is to turn off all non-essential interior and exterior lighting to demonstrate your continuing commitment to energy conservation and responsible resource management within the office building industry of San Francisco.

Participating in Earth Hour provides several unique benefits:

• Cost savings: tied to Building and Tenant expense reduction, Net Operating Income, Building Value, and Ownership Satisfaction
• Energy savings: tied to promoting sustainability of Earth’s natural resources, climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, environmental damage, and potential future generations
• Professional awareness: tied to responsible daily decision making to further reduce expenses through appropriate ongoing energy saving measures and reductions
• Social awareness: tied to understanding the stewardship process of the environment through wildlife conservation and continued sustainable lifestyles 
• Embarrassment: You don’t want to be the only one NOT doing it! You do want the GOOD recognition that will come with being involved and turning your building’s lights out!

About Earth Hour

In 2006, WWF-Australia inspired Sydney-siders to show their support for climate change action in the first ever Earth Hour event. It showed that everyone, from children to CEOs and politicians, has the power to change the world they live in.

Then in March 2007 in Sydney, Australia, 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights out for one hour to take a stand against climate change.

In 2008, the plan was to take Earth Hour to the rest of Australia. But then the City of Toronto, Canada, signed up and it wasn’t long before 35 countries and almost 400 cities and towns were part of the event. It said something compelling to the world: that the climate challenges facing our planet are so significant that change needs to be global.

With the invitation to ‘switch off’ extended to everyone, Earth Hour quickly became an annual global event. It’s scheduled on the last Saturday of every March – closely coinciding with the equinox to ensure most cities are in darkness as it rolled out around the Earth.

In 2011, Earth Hour saw hundreds of millions of people across 135 countries switch off for an hour. But it also marked the start of something new – going Beyond the Hour to commit to lasting action on climate change. And with the power of social networks behind the Earth Hour message, we hope to attract even more participation so we can build a truly global community committed to creating a more sustainable planet.