Last March 28, 2008 on a Saturday evening, a huge number of Filipinos participated in the 1 hour lights off time. It began around 8:30 – 9:30 pm in participation to the Earth Hour campaign. Philippines were ranked no.1 according to a representative of WWF or World Wildlife Fund.

There were over 15 million Filipino participants in 650 main cities and towns from far-flung islands who joined the movement. The country was ranked 1st in city and town contribution among 88 countries and 25 dissimilar time zones.

In this campaign, it only goes to show that Filipinos are truly competent. In fact, even the participants from the country would not believe for ranking first in the campaign and even defeated Australia.

Australia is one of the administrators of Earth Hour which was started during March 31, 2007. In this year’s campaign, Australia ranked 3rd with a totality of 309 cities and towns. Greece was 2nd having 484 cities and towns that participated. This is the 2nd occasion that Philippines participated in Earth Hour movement.

Philippines’ was not completely prepared in the previous Earth Hour as the country only has 2 weeks to organize. But, this year the country had a chance to arrange everything for 3 months prior. Thanks to the power of social networking, the administrators were able to spread the news through texts, blog posts, Friendster, Multiply, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Through the following announcements, a number of Filipino citizens had gain awareness of the campaign and contributed.

Based on the reports, Philippines was able to save 611 megawatt hours equaling to a bunch of coal-fired power plants shut off for an hour. And the reports do not yet include islands from Visayas. Electric network figures accounted that there is 386 megawatt hours saved in Luzon, 75 megawatt hours in Visayas and 150 megawatt hours in Mindanao.