TikTok and WWF India to support Earth Hour using '#Bee4ThePlanet'

TikTok and WWF-India will celebrate together Earth Hour 2019 with millions of supporters across the country.

Encouraging its users to ‘buzz and GIVEUP’ unsustainable practices, TikTok the official online media partner for WWF-India’s #Bee4ThePlanet challenge in India, aims to encourage people from all walks of life to come together and pledge their support for the cause of biodiversity conservation by helping reduce plastic pollution, paper and water wastage.

Earth Hour is the world’s largest, environmental grassroots movement in history, connecting hundreds of millions of people all over the planet. Celebrating people’s commitment across the globe to fight the threats against declining biodiversity, skylines around the world will go dark on Saturday 30 March 8:30 p.m. local time, as millions of people come together to commemorate the hour. As nature declines like never before, coupled with the ever-present challenge of climate change, Earth Hour 2019 will focus on raising awareness on why nature matters and inspiring global action on conserving nature.

The Earth Hour India 2019 campaign of WWF India aims to inspire millions across the country to use their talent and creativity on TikTok to shift to more sustainable practices of living in order to minimize their negative impact on the planet. With creativity at the centerfold, TikTok users are inspired to help generate “buzz for the planet”, using the fun bee sticker created especially for this campaign along with the hashtag ‘Bee4ThePlanet’. Users have already published videos to show their support, which has almost 3 million views on TikTok. Its users also can share their creative videos with their friends and family to bring together like-minded people from across the country to buzz for collective action for change. By buzzing like the bee with the hashtag and sticker, WWF India and TikTok hope to remind people that by coming together and creating a buzz, significant change take place when united by a single thread, much like the bees that work in unison.

Nature, underpinned by biodiversity, provides us a wealth of services that form the building blocks of modern society. However, according to the Living Planet Report 2018, we are living through the Great Acceleration – a unique event in the 4.5 billion-year history of our planet – with exploding human populations and economic growth driving unprecedented planetary change through increased demand for energy, land and water. Over the past 50 years, the global ecological footprint (one measure of our consumption of natural resources) has increased by over 190%. The Living Planet Index suggests that India’s ecological footprint per person is less than 1.75 global hectares per person. However, India’s high population levels make it likely that the country would face a widening ecological deficit even if current per-capita levels of resource consumption remain the same.

Sumedhas Rajgopal, Senior Manager, Strategy and Partnerships, TikTok, says, “We are excited to have partnered with the WWF-India to celebrate Earth Hour 2019, one of the most successful environmental protection related campaigns in the world, with over 180 countries participating. As a part of our commitment to users with fun engaging challenges, through this campaign, we hope to do our part and encourage our users to leverage their talent and creativity to participate and spread the word in raising awareness on the need for biodiversity conservation.”

Ravi Singh, Secretary General & CEO, WWF-India says, “Earth Hour is about people coming together to celebrate the planet and raise awareness about the need to protect it. This partnership with TikTok will help us reach out to the young populace of India, the future leaders of tomorrow and build new constituencies of supporters who will take forward the message of conservation in the years to come.”