site.btaBTA Joins Earth Hour 2024 on Saturday Evening

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) switched off its lights for one hour, between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. local time, on Saturday as part of the 18th edition of the Earth Hour initiative.

The event was organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as a global grassroots movement uniting people to show symbolic support for the planet and to raise awareness of biodiversity loss, the climate crisis and other environmental issues affecting Earth.

A number of traffic lights in central Sofia beamed green hearts throughout the day. Apart from the BTA head office, other landmark buildings also joined the event, including the St Alexander Nevsky Memorial Cathedral, the St Cyril and St Methodius National Library, the Ivan Vazov National Theatre, the Archaeological Museum, the National Gallery and the Sofia City Art Gallery. 

Bulgarians now rank fourth in the world and first in Europe by having spent more than 1,000 hours doing something positive for our planet - a virtual, physical, or child-friendly activity like cooking, an outdoor adventure to reconnect with Earth, watching a nature documentary, or photographing and filming nature.

Earth Hour was famously started as a lights out event in Sydney, Australia, on March 31, 2007. Since then, it has taken place annually on the last Saturday of March.

In Bulgaria, it was first officially celebrated in 2009, under the auspices of European Affairs Minister Gergana Passy and British Ambassador Stephen Williams.