CORPORATES CLIMBING EARTH HOUR LADDER

Despite the global economic crisis, many corporations are providing Earth Hour pro bono support and are getting behind the campaign in a number of creative and exciting ways:

*Abercrombie & Kent, a high-end travel experience agency will be helping its clients take part in Earth Hour in some of the world's most remote locations from camps in Africa to the wilds of Antarctica

*Carlsberg offices and breweries will be turning out the lights

*CNN, Discovery Channel and the History Channel are providing $0.5M advertising space in Singapore and South East Asia

*Intercontinental Hotel Group's 250 hotels in Asia Pacific will be turning out the lights

*McDonalds can be contacted at a country level and are already committed to turning out the golden arches in Australia, UK, Argentina, Chile, Denmark and Peru

*Yahoo! Hispanic Americas is requesting editorial content for Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela!

For more corporate inspiration, please click here or contact James Kissell jkissell@wwf.org.au

EARTH HOUR'S GLOBAL TIMING

Earth Hour 2009 will roll out around the globe between 8:30PM and 9:30PM on Saturday 28 March. The first location to switch off will be Chatham Islands, NZ at GMT 06:45 hours. The last locations to celebrate Earth Hour will be Vancouver, LA, Las Vegas and San Francisco switching off at GMT 03:30 hours on Sunday March 29 - crossing 25 standard time zones.

A global timing press release, schedule template and a graphic icons world map has been developed for you to localise, translate and distribute to your local media.

The materials will be available COB tomorrow, Friday 6 March. The embargo is set for 00.01 Tuesday 10 March.

To access all press release materials click here c/o Yeb Sano.


LATEST STATISTICS

With regard to the number of global registrations for EH09, we are currently unable to advise the numbers. This is because we are waiting from 9 country teams to provide the data, so we can calculate global stats. We hope to resolve this and be in a position to provide global stats as soon as possible. We will send a News Alert email as soon as these statistics become available.

In the meantime, feel free to use the stats below externally:

2009 stats: aiming for 1,000 cities and 1 billion people

Earth Hour currently has 934 cities and towns in 80 countries/regions signed up to participate - more than double the number of cities that participated in 2008

Earth Hour video on You Tube has been viewed 360,000 times

One Facebook Earth Hour group has over 120,000 members. We have 15 official EH groups and many unofficial groups.

200+ iconic building and landmarks will turn their lights out

One Facebook Earth Hour group has over 120,000 members. We have 15 official EH groups and many unofficial groups.

200+ iconic building and landmarks will turn their lights out.

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News Alert courtesy of Mr. Yeb Saño, WWF-Philippines National Coordinator for Earth Hour Philippines 2009.