Don’t be alarmed if you are walking down the street tomorrow night (Saturday, March 29) and all the lights suddenly go out.
It is all due to the international Earth Hour 2014 initiative – an environmentally-friendly switch-off organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) across the globe. This year 85 Portuguese municipalities will be taking part, either by turning off all the lights in and around local monuments and buildings or by encouraging the population to switch-off at home.
Lagoa, Albufeira, Loulé, Lagos and Faro are the Algarve boroughs that have so far joined the initiative, while others throughout the country will be organising events like the mega Yoga stretch in Lisbon, Cascais, Oeiras, Santarém, Coimbra, Évora, Aveiro, Tomar, Portalegre and Batalha.
The event annually sees thousands of cities, monuments, and people pulling the plugs on power lines to celebrate a commitment to the environment.
Earth Hour has been celebrated in Portugal for the last three years and has already seen landmarks like Lisbon’s Cristo-Rei statue and the 25 de Abril Bridge plunged into darkness at witching hour.
Elsewhere, New York’s Empire State Building and Time Square, London’s Big Ben and Italy’s Tower of Pisa have all done their bit to ‘switch-off’ for the planet.
