Expolanka celebrates Earth Hour

Wednesday, 18 May 2016 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Maintaining the momentum from previous years, Expolanka held the annual ‘Earth Hour Competition’ for its Facebook audience for the third consecutive year. The participants of this competition are rewarded for their home grown projects that contribute towards environmental conservation. The main three winners received cash prizes while all the other entrants received t-shirts. In addition to the competition, Expolanka also used video messages during the two weeks leading up to Earth Hour in order to build awareness about environmental protection methods that people can adopt.

Speaking about the activities Expolanka Holdings Head of Marketing, Corporate Communications and CSR Paddy Weerasekera said, “Expolanka was one of the first corporate supporters of the Earth Hour program six years ago. We decided on a social media campaign as we find this platform to be engaging and know that it provides ample space to spread awareness on this critical issue. The response was considerable and encouraging. We were able to engage our audience in a discussion and an experiment which inspired them to explore ingenious ways of reusing, recycling and conserving energy.”

The competitors were asked to post an authentic photograph or a video of an environmentally friendly activity and describe the said activity briefly. Expolanka and EFL CSR chose three winning activities out of over 100 submissions, rewarding each of the three winners cash prizes and the other accepted entrants won free Earth Hour ‘Change the World’ t-shirts.

Competition entries portrayed various methods of reducing waste, saving energy and re-cycling such as composting food waste, switching to energy saving methods, reusing plastic and stopping the use of polythene.

‘Earth Hour’ is the world’s largest voluntary environmental campaign to fight climate change and it was held this year on Saturday 19 March from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. where everyone was humbly requested to switch off all non-essential lights as a symbolic act to support this cause. Sri Lanka is part in this global event initiated by WWF with Expolanka becoming a national partner for the ‘Earth Hour’ event to take place in this country.