Earth Hour Global uses Instagram to promote environmental consciousness

This past June, Earth Hour Global organized an “Instagram photo walk” around the Sydney Eveleigh Organic Markets to encourage local iPhone photographers “to re-imagine the modern sustainable city and share these visualisations with the global community”.

After promoting the walk through Facebook and Twitter (and with the help of an established and popular Instagramer), participants knew to tag their photos #sydearthhourpw and to upload them on Instagram. The walk was scheduled to coincide with the Farmers’ Markets, to give the photographers more stimuli to capture sustainable practices and ideas for Sydney. The organization’s initial invitation post on Facebook received 790 Likes and 41 comments from people in Sydney and around the world.

Despite this, Earth Hour says it didn’t anticipate the amount of positive feedback that resulted once the photos were shared. There were a total of 62 #sydearthhourpw photos uploaded to Instagram, generating 2,286 Likes and 407 comments. Since the photo walk, its Instagram community of followers (@earth_hour) has increased to more than 850.

Winston Su, the Pathfinder and Head of Special Projects for Earth Hour Global is the mastermind behind the social media campaign who found a new way to utilize Instagram to promote environmental consciousness. When he submitted a selection of photos on the organization’s Facebook page, it generated 3,085 Likes and 175 comments. There was an impressive total of 1,475,597 impressions for the posts relating to the Sydney photo walk.

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The event took place on Saturday 25 June 2011, check out a few photos from the day below:

Another walk will take place this weekend on September 3rd along one of the major traffic arteries of Sydney, George Street. Sydney City Council has often discussed the possibility of pedestrianising this street, so Earth Hour says it has has invited Instagramers to capture what they like best about the city and the possibilities for car-free thoroughfare. Earth Hour will be presenting the images to the City Council to strengthen their case for a pedestrians only George Street. See some of the photos that already exits on the tag #abettersydney below:

Featured image source: rorem/Shutterstock