Energy Wasting Day
Monday, 31 Mar 2008 16:18
Energy Wasting Day aims to highlight wasteful practices
An obnoxious, overweight fat man in a pair of red pants: the latest answer to tackling climate change?
Together - the organisation behind Energy Wasting Day on April 1st - certainly hopes so. Its latest campaign involves a short video of fictional character Dan Power, who from the moment he wakes wastes as much as energy as he can - driving a 4x4, boiling huge amounts of water and cooling his red-pant-clad body down by standing with the fridge door open.
Watch the video here.
Together hopes the tongue-in-cheek, humorous view will help individuals see how ridiculous some energy wasting practices are and thereby encourage them to cut these out of their daily lives and play a small role in helping the planet.
"Given that we're a climate change campaign, on the face of it it might seem slightly strange for us to be almost promoting the idea of energy wasting," Together's campaign director David Hall told inthenews.co.uk.
"But basically we've created the spoof day - Energy Wasting Day - and the reason we did that was it gave us an opportunity to create a very funny and engaging film which shows how ridiculous energy wasting is.
"At the same time hopefully people will recognise a few of the things they see happening and make them think about the energy they use."
The short film, which has been placed on YouTube, MySpace and MSN, has already received about 150,000 visits and Together hopes interest will "dramatically rise" during Energy Wasting Day.
People watching the viral are given information to the joke website energywastingday.com, which then has links to Together's actual website.
This site has a number of tips for people to reduce their energy consumption and links for climate change toolkits.
Campaigns by other organisations have also sought to encourage people to make small changes in their homes to help the planet, but Together hopes its humorous stance will persuade more people to change their ways.
"We're trying to sow seeds in people's minds and ultimately find their way to Together.com, which has quite a few easy things people can do, for example getting loft insulation and energy-saving kettles," said Mr Hall.
"[Environmentally-friendly actions] will remain a bit dull but we try and add a bit of humour and fun because ultimately while there's a small percentage of the population who are already very interested in this and already doing the right things there's a large group of people who would do the right stuff if it was easy and a bit fun - it's that group our campaign is particularly going after."
After this week's focus on Dan Power and Energy Wasting Day, Together plans to create an 'eco sins' campaign where people can go on to the Together website to confess their environmentally-unfriendly ways and win prizes.
