There is a lot to say in this article. It’s Earth Hour on March 27 and we globally switch off lights for one hour. Why are we doing this?

Beyond this symbolic act, “the mission is to increase awareness and spark global conversations on protecting nature not only to combat the climate crisis, but to ensure our own health, happiness, prosperity and even survival.”

From our Business Innovation perspective, we are interested in your impact. How do you translate the environmental challenge for your business? 

And since our AI-based content writing experiment is still going on, you can guess by whom this article is written...

Don’t worry, the machines didn’t fully take over, so we still picked our human brains for this article to some extent. Just as much as our ecological footprint is still our very own, made of conscious decisions and self-inflicted actions. It’s us having the choice over what goes into our shopping bag, what this bag is made of and if we visit our local store or get our supply shipped from abroad. 

The first Earth Hour took place in 2007 as a symbolic lights-out event in Sydney, Australia, initiated by the WWF and partners. Earth Hour is meanwhile one of the world's largest grassroots movements for the environment. But it goes far beyond the symbolic action of switching off - it aims to become a catalyst for positive environmental impact, driving major legislative changes by harnessing the power of the people and collective action.

The big question these days is, how can you reach people and drive a change in behavior in an increasingly political and polarizing world, where we are connected at every moment and struggle to find our position and power amidst an overload of information. 

Big sociological shifts don’t happen overnight. It’s a gradient development that is taking place already. Look at your reaction over the person in front of you packing his or her groceries into dozens of separate plastic bags. Or someone who throws a plastic cup out of the car. These actions upset you more than a few years ago. This shift in a bigger picture is happening everywhere, all the way towards innovative business models and changes in entire systems.

This simple but effective action is often overlooked because it represents such a fundamental, even simple step: re-Wikipedia-ing our mentality and our understanding of the world, so that we are aware of the fact that the world in its current state is not a given, and will not always be OK.

Turning this into a business advantage is where innovation comes into play.

If we seriously care about creating gradual improvements, we need to be able to embed our "business case" for a greener future for the generations to come and make them see it is not just us wanting to have a "greenwashing campaign” for a publicity boost. We need to make businesses see that

lean green (sustainable development, environmental protection and business saving) means peace of mind, higher profits and sustainable development for the future.

Business experts say, that the business case needs to be as compelling as the environmental benefits. This is why I so strongly believe in business innovation, as it provides an (exciting and fun) way to gradually improve systems by providing better examples that stand the test of profitability and success, without compromising on values. This is how we reach people after all, by making the better option more and more attractive until it becomes the default choice, just like the re-usable shopping bag these days. 

Let’s switch off our lights for an hour on Saturday, March 27, 2021, at 8:30 pm local time and dedicate it towards solutions that are already existing and how we can integrate them even better into our lives or business. 

If you want to see how you can further take part, check out here.

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