After countdown by millions of thousands of people, the skyscrapers standing in the Central Business District (CBD) area of Singapore all went dark for Earth Hour at around 8:30 local time on Saturday night.

All the landmark buildings around the city-state's Marina Bay, including the Merlion, the Singapore Flyer and the Esplanade, were turned off for an hour. In all, there were more than 100 buildings, locations and organizations around Singapore turn their lights out, showing their support for environmentally sustainable action.

MORE ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVE

With the global headquarters of Earth Hour moved to Singapore last year, the World Wide Fund for Nature initiative expanded in Singapore to involve more organizations and individuals.

Under the brand name "I Will If You Will", there are three challenges this year to encourage more people and organizations to participate in common practices to save more energy.

IKEA Singapore will have a free reusable blue bag day if 20,000 people pledge to use reusable bags instead of plastic bags. They commit to give a free IKEA reusable blue bag for each transaction per customer in Singapore. IKEA will stop the sale of plastic bags from March 23, 2013 onwards.

Marina Bay Sands commits to raise its air-conditioners by 1 degree for one day every month if their top 20 venders pledge to go 1 degree up on Earth Hour 2013.

Philips Lighting will also give LED and sustainable lighting to 1000 lower-income families if 100,000 Singaporean families convert to LED lighting solutions.

According to the organizer, the so-called "I Will If You Will" challenge-based platform encourages people to make a difference in the world by offering them something in return. This year's involvement of more organizations may provoke more participants here.

DANCE TO POWER EARTH HOUR

The public played an active role in powering up the main event held at The Float at Marina Bay in this city-state. They danced on energy absorbing pads to convert the kinetic energy produced to electricity, which were used to power an outdoor film screening as part of the celebration activities for the night.

The initiative is said to encourage people to do more exercise to keep fit and strengthen the awareness of renewable energy.

Besides the downtown area of the city-state, it was also lights out in other parts of Singapore. In the west, common lights at three blocks of flats were switched off for an hour from 8.30 p.m.. In the east, Changi Airport dimmed non-essential lights across all three terminals.

CapitaLand, one of the largest developers in Southeast Asia, also said 248 of its properties across Asia and Europe, including 20 countries such as Singapore, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Japan as well as Qatar, France, Germany and Spain, participated and will participate in the world-wide event.

Since its inception in 2007, Earth Hour has grown into a global phenomenon that encouraged a lot of people to show support for environmentally sustainable action. It now encompasses over 7,000 cities and towns in 152 different countries involving hundreds of millions of participants across seven continents.

It was the fifth year for Singapore to mark the Earth Hour, a climate initiative that first began in Sydney in 2007.

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