Earth Hour and Beyond

For one hour tomorrow, millions of people will turn off their lights and sit in relative darkness. It may seem like a random way to support environmentally sustainable action, but Earth Hour — a global initiative in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) — is hoping that one hour of darkness will lead to a whole year of change.

Begun in Australia in 2007, Earth Hour has grown exponentially. Last year, more than 125 countries participated in the self-imposed blackout. Even major landmarks such as Rome’s Colosseum, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, Toronto’s CN Tower and Egypt’s Pyramids went dark to support the cause.

Earth Hour, on its skeleton crew, has been trying to answer that question for five years. Now, they think they might have the answer in a new platform designed for and powered by its millions of supporters.

Beyond the Hour is a platform that allows anybody to post and pledge his or her environmental actions and then share those promises and stories through social networks. With global scale in mind, the platform will be translated into 11 different languages.

Users can mouse over the dynamic images to preview randomly selected actions or search by a variety of terms, including location. If users see an action that speaks to them, they can join in by clicking “do this” to mirror the pledge.

An app version of the platform has already landed in the iTunes store for iPhone, with an Android version on the way. Both offer all the same functionality of the web app.