CSR360

Posted: Friday 26 March 10, 3.37pm GMT

A number of leading Irish companies are actively engaging in the campaign by switching off lights at company offices, high street stores and branches throughout the country, as well as communicating to thousands of staff in Ireland the importance of their own involvement at home.

Earth Hour 2010 (www.earthhour.org) takes place on Saturday, March 27th at 8.30pm across the world. This is the fourth annual Earth Hour and last year hundreds of millions of people in 4000 cities in 88 countries across the world took part in this symbolic action against climate change.

Business in the Community Ireland member companies such as Abbott Ireland, AIB, Bord Gais, Bank of Ireland, Coca Cola, Diageo, Deloitte, O2, Sodexo, State Street, Ulster Bank are all actively engaging in the Earth Hour movement through not only turning off the lights in stores, offices and buildings but also actively encouraging their staff to get involved.

Here are some examples of how corporate Ireland is engaging with Earth Hour 2010:

• Abbott Ireland is providing free candles to all their staff to encourage participation at home. In addition a text reminder will be sent to all staff on Saturday to remind them to get involved.
• AIB will be taking part by turning off lighting and other non-essential services in Bankcentre and Head Office locations during Earth Hour.
• Bord Gais’ main focus is to reduce their carbon footprint relating to their buildings’ energy consumption, waste generation and treatment and travel to facilities and business meeting venues. They are actively encouraging staff to participate in Earth Hour and are seeking pledges so that they can calculate the positive impact in terms of energy conservation as a result of staff action.
• Bank of Ireland will turn off the lights during Earth Hour at their landmark building at 2 College Green. All non essential lighting will also be switched off in all other locations around the country. All staff are being asked to make a special effort this weekend to ensure all PCs and other non essential equipment are powered off on Friday evening.
• Coca-Cola Ireland will be communicating to all staff the need to get involved and in the UK Coca-Cola will be running a number of activities to mark Earth Hour including turning off its iconic Piccadilly sign for the full sixty minutes, only the fourth time the sign has been switched off since World War II.
• Deloitte we will be supporting Earth Hour by switching off all external building lights and other non-essential services in their Dublin, Cork & Limerick offices over the weekend. They will also be issuing an email to staff to make them aware of Earth Hour and encourage them to celebrate the event at home.
• Earth Hour is being marked globally by Diageo, with sites all over the world turning off lights in buildings for an hour on 27th March. Some sites are raising awareness and getting staff engaged by giving out candles with the earth hour details printed on them. In St. James’s Gate, there was an information stand in the staff canteen in the run up to Earth Hour.
• O2 are actively participating by switching off non essential lighting in a number of their offices and stores throughout the country including Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, their Customer Care Centre in Limerick, Marshall House in Limerick and in key stores in Cork & Dublin. Also O2 are communicating Earth Hour to all their employees
• Sodexo has emailed all their 2000 staff encouraging them to join in.
• All State Street properties in Ireland will be participating in Earth Hour.
• Ulster Bank has supported Earth Hour since its introduction in 2007, and will again be supporting the initiative this year, switching off non-essential lights in all its properties throughout Ireland. Branch and business centre staff will be asked to switch lights off from Friday evening until Monday morning.