-Can I have a cheeseburger, please – I ordered a meal from Mc Donald’s for the first time in nearly a year.
-Would you like a coke with that or… Uhm, do you know about our special menu offer…
-No, thanks, just the burger.
-1,80.
-Excuse me, may I ask you if you are going to join Earth Hour by turning off the decorative lights and logo signboard outside?
-Ooh, is it tonight… I shall… can you wait for a moment so that I can ask… – he called some name. A few seconds later his voice, muffled by the sound of the sizzling chips from the near fryers, flew across from behind the counter – Um…boss, there is a boy outside that wants to know if we are turning the lights out tonight because of the Earth Day…uhm or was it Earth Hour…or something … I don’t know…we can’t…or maybe … – (waiting) (waiting) – Yes, of course. We will take part in the initiative and we will turn off the signs…

That very same night the vivid yellow Mc Donald’s sign continued blazing with blinding light. Ironically, Mc Donald’s is one of the corporations that from the very first year of Earth hour broadly boosted their support for the cause.

We had been spreading the simplistic Earth Hour idea for a few weeks and unfortunately we confronted people who explicitly displayed their unwillingness to commit a single symbolic gesture. I definitely cannot agree that such initiatives are pointless and to my mind people’s reaction simply reflects their obsession and weakness to give up, even for a few minutes, the conveniences of our century.
Nevertheless, I do think that a large part of our society has grown sufficiently open to campaigns of this kind, having heard thousands of local people gladly promising that they’ll turn out the lights in their homes.
I am truly happy and proud that I successfully initiated and took part in the realization of this project so that one global idea reached Burgas. I can only hope that our endeavours will be appreciated and justified and every single one who happened to overhear about Earth Hour spared a few minutes of their time to contemplate making those first individual steps to our collective change.
I want to express my gratitude to all the people with whom we joined forces and worked as one big team and, of course, to everybody who took part in Earth Hour!
Thank you!