Turn It Off!

Apologies for my absence this past week. I do have an excuse though… a very good one in fact. I had to go to London! Yes a last minute job for work saw me board a plane Friday week ago and return last Thursday night. What a terrible job I have!

Somehow between driving around sites on the Southbank and spending hours on end in front of my laptop researching the London property market in the restaurant of the Sanderson Hotel (you astound me Mr Starck!) I did manage to find the time to squeeze in some retailing. But what I want to share with you in this post is a fantastic display I saw travelling through Abu Dhabi Airport.



Turn It Off is a campaign run by the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency to encourage people to reduce their consumption of power and water. Being in the middle of the desert, the United Arab Emirates shares a similar environmental focus to us in Australia, but the way they’ve approached the campaign to educate people coming into the country is brilliant. Up until now I’ve always had the perception that as a result of oil this is an extraordinarily wealthy country with mind-blowingly opulent facilities and architecture. To the point of verging on being an excessive draw on our natural resources. Seeing this campaign was reassuring that this nation is not only aware of the issue but actively trying to change behaviour of it’s citizens and tourists.

I just hope that the 500 metre long corridor of advertising plasmas, each dotted twenty metres apart, was powered by solar!