Luke Cutforth severed all ties with his electrical life for a day, and it was a lot harder than you would think.
On 24 March 2018 at 20:30, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)’s Earth Hour took place, encouraging people to turn off all their lights for one whole hour. According to WWF, “Earth Hour is a global movement, which brings millions together across the world to call for greater action on climate change”.
In honour of Earth Hour, Luke Cutforth went an extra step and decided to live without electricity for one whole day. He bravely put down his phone and switched off his internet in pursuit of raising awareness for a good cause.
However, Luke ran into some problems, because this challenge didn’t just apply to his own gadgets and his home, but also to the outside world. This meant no electric public transport, for example.
And with the schedule Luke had on this day, he was unfortunately forced at times to come into contact with electricity, mainly electric lighting. But the challenge must go on – he combatted the electrical lighting by wearing some stylish sunglasses indoors!
When it came time for Luke to get clean, he couldn’t simply have a shower since his water is heated by electricity. This meant he had to get some help from his very kind friend, Evan Edinger, who poured freezing cold water over him in the garden.
Travelling seemed to be the biggest task for Luke. His normal means of transportation weren’t allowed so he instead had to get four buses for what would have been a simple journey. Since Google Maps was not allowed, he had to trust his own map-reading talents which caused him to get a little lost. He made to his destination in the end, though, and that’s all that really matters.
At the end of this challenging day, Luke sat down in front of his camera to reflect on how it went. “This video is not about saying we should never use electricity, obviously. It’s more just about saying we should be grateful for the way of life that we have and not to take it for granted, and do everything we can to try and preserve it,” he says in a heartwarming send-off.
We hope this video reminded you to appreciate the small things in our lives that we forget are actually luxuries, and to be more conscious of your everyday electrical consumption.
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