Valmet participates in annual Earth Hour event to help take action on climate change
Mar 26, 2015
| WWF Earth Hour is a global campaign to combat climate change, in which people around the world agree to turn off their lights for one hour on the same day to create awareness of climate change and reasonable energy use. |
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This year WWF Earth Hour takes place on Saturday March 28, 2014, from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm local time, when lights are turned off. Companies, cities, organizations, associations and private individuals are all encouraged to take part.
Valmet offices and workshops around the world are joining the event for the 6th time. Some of the locations will extent the lights-off campaign by arranging specific local activities or participating in joint national campaigns. Valmet sites in Araucária, Brazil, and Gorizia, Italy, have even made this a daily routine: they turn off the workshop lighting every workday during lunch.
Valmet targets for 20% reduction in energy consumption and CO2 by 2020
Global warming is a common concern across the globe: experts and scientists see that exceeding the threshold of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial level could cause irreversible and potentially catastrophic damage to human civilization.
“This event is a small initiative in the big picture, but the active participation of Valmet locations around the world clearly indicates our common mindset and commitment towards improving the environmental efficiency of our operations,” says Victoria Larsson, Valmet’s Global HSE Manager. “We continuously work to make improvements which is seen in the favorable trend in our environmental KPIs: in 2014 we decreased our energy consumption by 9% and CO2 emissions by 16%. Our long-term target for 2020 is to reduce them by fifth from 2005-2009 average”.
Image: Signing for Earth Hour in Xian, China.
About Earth Hour - going beyond the hour
Earth Hour is a global environmental movement organized by WWF and volunteer organizations worldwide. The event was started as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia in 2007. Since then it has grown to engage more than 162 countries and territories worldwide. The movement targets for impacts beyond the hour and it has already contributed to some legislative changes for instance. Read more at www.earthhour.org.
