Earth Hour 2013

Today is the 23rd March, and that means, other than its Saturday and the first day of the working week, that it is that one day a year that people all over the world show their support for the environment.

Thats Earth Hour.

Last year, the Environmental Society of Oman joined the rest of the world for the second time in the Earth Hour. It's an initiative where people turn off their electrical appliances, lights and whatever else uses electricity for an hour between 8:30 and 9:30 pm on a designated date, this year the date is today: March 23rd. Last year here in the Sultanate, an estimated 53,000KWh of electricity was saved (up from 20,000 KWh in 2011). This year the ESO are trying a new tack: The board members of the ESO will join hands with Muscat Municipality if over 2000 people pledge to lend their support to the Environmental Society of Oman by signing up over here:

http://www.omanearthhour.org

At the time of publishing, the count was at 1,385 - so a little way to go to get to the magic 2,000, but it's doable!


Here's a few tips to help save some electricity during the hour, and in general:

1. Turn lights off in rooms you are not in. If you have outside lights, turn them off too.
2. When you are done charging your mobile device, camera or whatever, turn the power off at the wall - chargers suck electricity whether you have a phone plugged into them or not.
3. Turn your TV/DVD/Sound off at the wall, even in "Standby" mode, they are still using a surprising amount of power. Check out this graph and this table showing just how much various appliances use around the home when in standby mode, it's quite interesting to see.
4. Believe it or not, the amount of energy expended in rearing livestock is actually significant, by eating vegetarian even just one day a week, you are reducing your carbon footprint.

As for things to do during the Earth Hour, here's my suggestions:

1. Dinner by candle light
2. Going for a walk
3. Talking with friends
4. Take a nap!
5. Play hide in the dark!

Here's an example of my favourite City, Toronto, during Earth hour 5 years ago:

Lets see if we can do better here in Oman!

le fin.

Recycling in Oman

This is a post I've been meaning to write for quite a while and have just never gotten around to! Well.... here goes, the latest in my series: MM guide to Oman.

The Sultanate of Oman does not really do that much recycling, but contrary to the widely held belief, not everything you throw in the bin needs to go to the dump. Here's my round up of what you can recycle here:

1. Plastic water bottles. Masafi & Tanuf, and the Environmental Society of Oman have an active plastic bottle recycling program - rumour is that the recycling plant in the UAE is unable to accept the bottles currently, and so the bottles are being shredded and baled and stored until such a time that the UAE will allow the plastic refuse to be transported over the border for recycling. This may be old news, I've not heard an update to this in over a year. There are collection bins dotted all over the Capital, I personally use the one at the ABA school in Al Khuwair.

2. Paper. Apex publishing, the people behind Muscat Daily, The Week and a bunch of other publications, operate a paper recycling operation. They will come to your location (for volumes significant enough) to collect the paper, or alternatively there are a few collection bins around town - again I personally use the one at the ABA school in Al Khuwair.

3. Aluminium cans. Basically soda cans - not steel cans that are used for soups and such, but the aluminium ones. I'm not really 100% sure what happens with them, but there is an active group of people (at least here in Muscat) that will go around from bin to bin and collect the pop cans. I'm told they sell the cans by weight to "takers" who take the cans back to India on ships on return voyages for recycling there, and also I've heard the cans are sold to truck drivers heading back to the UAE, where apparently there are also takers who pay for the empty cans. Either way, if you separate your cans into a bag and leave them outside a dumpster, in less than an hour it's usually been picked up by someone.

4. Can ring-pulls. Yes the canning plants here are still using older machines that have the detachable ring pulls that went out of fashion in many other countries years ago for the number of broken nails and amount of litter they cause! Even the UAE has the newer style cans with the ring pulls that stay attached to the can. But, there's a silver lining, and that is that most of the expatriate schools in town run collections for these ring pulls, which are made from a high quality aluminium. The ring pulls are collected by a girl at the TAISM school, Tara Mary Aziz and donated to a charity in Thailand that melts them down and makes prosthetic limbs from them.

Thats about it, there is the charity shop run haphazardly by the Dar al Atta charity which is down in Ruwi which accepts all sorts of things - clothes, furniture etc, and there are numerous book sales run by various different groups (my two favourites are the Dar al Atta Lets Read campaign, and the Oman Cat-Astrophy expat-run animal spay and neutering program).

So, hopefully you will think the next time you throw a can in your trash, and try and reduce the amount of waste you personally generate - remember, every little helps!

I'm not aware of any other domestic recycling programs in town, if I've missed something please let me know by commenting here or dropping me an email!

le fin.

Earth Hour: Oman

Last year, the Environmental Society of Oman joined the rest of the world for the first time in the Earth Hour. It's an initiative where people turn off their electrical appliances, lights and whatever else uses electricity for an hour between 8:30 and 9:30 pm on a designated date, this year the date is today: March 31st. Last year here in the Sultanate, an estimated 20,000KW of electricity was saved, enough to supply 250 houses for a whole day or the whole district of Al Khuwair in Muscat for an hour (ripped that from this Oman Tribune article). This year the ESO are targeting a saving of 50,000KW of electricity, no small mean feat as it means we will have to collectively do more than twice as well as we did last year to hit this target.

Here's a few tips to help save some electricity during the hour, and in general:

1. Turn lights off in rooms you are not in. If you have outside lights, turn them off too.
2. When you are done charging your mobile device, camera or whatever, turn the power off at the wall - chargers suck electricity whether you have a phone plugged into them or not.
3. Turn your TV/DVD/Sound off at the wall, even in "Standby" mode, they are still using a surprising amount of power. Check out this graph and this table showing just how much various appliances use around the home when in standby mode, it's quite interesting to see.

As for things to do during the Earth Hour, here's my suggestions:

1. Dinner by candle light
2. Going for a walk
3. Talking with friends
4. Take a nap!
5. Play hide in the dark!

Remember, as the Tesco supermarket chain loves to remind its customers, "Every little helps", so join in, whats turning some lights off for an hour really going to do to you?

le fin.

Bits and pieces

Ahh Wednesday, your here. Joy.

So what's going on this weekend? Quite a lot it seems.


Tonight, of course, there is the Bollywood Rocks gig brought by Roar Entertainment at the Qurum Amphitheater, tickets are still available if your interested, they start at a fiver - click here for more information.

However, over at Zouk tonight from 8pm there is Ministry of Sound's Patrick Hagenaar dishing out his brand of house music. Cover is RO 5 for ladies, or RO 10 for couples / single guys. Rather amusingly, they want you to "Dress To Impress And Come To Party hard" (perhaps someone should tell them about the rule with capital letters)?

The Muscat International Film Festival is happening too, and here's the program for today thru Friday. We'll skip over the drama caused by the grand Mufti who said that the whole thing was Haram and then SQU subsequently pulling out of the festival. heh.

March28/Wednesday

12noon - Oman auditorium

English: Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky

6.00pm -8 pm

OMANI: ASEEL premiere

Director Dr Khalid Zadjali

9pm -10pm

French:  The Artist

Director star cast

March 29/Thursday

10.30am – 12noon - Oman auditorium

English: Dr Zhivago

Omar sheriff, Victor Banerjee

5.30pm -8pm

English: Passage to India

Omar sheriff, Victor Banerjee

8.30pm -10 pm

English: Salmon goes fishing in Yemen – premiere

Director/star

11pm -12.30midngt

UAE: See the shadow

Director: Nawaf Al Ganahi

March 30/Friday

9.00am – 11noon - Oman auditorium

English: Spy who loved me

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Sir Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Director John Glen, Rila & Sumith band

5.00pm -8pm

Malayalam: Vanaprastham

Mohanlal, Major Ravi

9pm -11 pm

Oman auditorium

Arabic: Now, where are we going?

Lebanese Director Nadine Al Labaki

11pm -12.30midnight

Arabic: On the edge

Director Laila Al Kelani- Morocco

As blogged by Dhofar Eco bug, and reblogged by Dhofari Gucci, Thursday 29th March is clean up Oman day. There is a Facebook group here but I could not figure out how to see what events are going on up here in Muscat tomorrow - so if you know more about that please do share.

And finally, on Friday there is Sunidhi Chauhan at the Qurum Amphitheater from 5pm. Tickets start at RO 7 and can be bought from Lulu's. More information here.

Enjoy the weekend.

le fin.

TGI Fridays coming to Oman, and ESO quiz tonight

If you have been driving past the City Seasons hotel in Al Khuwair recently, you may have seen the notice that TGI Fridays is opening soon there. There is, as always these days, a facebook page for the launch, and you can find that by clicking here. Currently the actual launch date has not been shared, but one imagines that it will be on a Friday....

Tonight, the Environmental Society of Oman is having a quiz night at The Radisson Blu in Khuwair from 9:30pm - there are lots of prizes to be won and there is a fee of RO 3.000 per person to enter. It's for a good cause so if you are free tonight, why not go and check it out!

Have a good weekend everyone!

le fin.

March 26th, 2011 8:30-9:30pm = Earth Hour

This Saturday, the 26th March is the next global Earth Hour. This is an event that everyone, business large and small and individuals are requested to conserve energy for just 1 hour to highlight environmental concerns.

With a slight twist this year: People are being asked to continue their energy saving habits past the 1 hour mark and for as long as they can. You can check out the website here for more information about Earth Hour, but here's the gist of it:

Turn off all your lights and electrical equipment that you can live without, for an hour or more to help highlight environmental concerns.

I suggest doing one or more of the following activities during the hour:

1. Dinner by candle light
2. Going for a walk
3. Talking with friends
4. Take a nap!
5. Play hide in the dark!

Make sure you do your part!

le fin.