Dear friends of the biosphere,
John Alwyn-Jones was the MC for our Noosa Biosphere Day. He sent me a note with a refreshing angle on the daylight saving debate. John suggests we should embrace all benefits of daylight saving and change to 'Noosa Time' in Summer. Don’t jump to conclusions about the idea until you read the background to it.  Some lateral thinking.  We need to find creative ways to become more sustainable, so I thought I share this with you - with kind permission from John.

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<...> I recently visited Vietnam and we stayed at number of resorts, including Six Senses Hideaway, Ninh Van Bay – see http://www.sixsenses.com/SixSensesNinhVanBay

The great feature of this resort is that although it is located in Vietnam, it decided to adopt its own time to allow for people getting up later and also more critically so that it was lighter in the evenings.

The reason is that it drives greater interest in cocktails, dinner by the pools, beach, etc and of course greater revenue, while critically also reducing power consumption. It occurred to Lyn and me when we were at the resort that this is exactly the issue and opportunity for Noosa. I believe this is a serious environmental and business issue for Noosa, with the time zone we have to live within driven by other communities further North.

If we were able to turn our clocks ahead one hour as NSW does for the summer that means that it would get lighter later and go darker later. The net effect of that is that there would be less power consumption in the evenings as it would be lighter later, when people tend to be around rather than in the mornings, and it would boost revenue in bars and restaurants, which now currently serve early and close early.

I appreciate it needs a tad more scientific analysis and also that this is a thorny issue that has been debated long and hard and is unlikely to fly for QLD.

Therefore my suggestion is that Noosa turns this into the biggest and most innovative business and environmental pr campaign ever by declaring Noosa time for the summer, that is turning the our clock ahead one hour as NSW does for the Noosa administrative region.

I may be wrong, but I do not believe there is any law that says we have to comply with a time zone! The pr impact would be immense and also imagine signs on the highways saying, “You are now entering Noosa Eastern Standard time – Noosa Time”. These that say that it would put us out of synch with the rest of the region, QLD, Australia or the world are missing the point! Noosa is eclectic, perhaps even eccentric and definitely unique and different and this is another way to demonstrate this, in addition to an amazing opportunity to benefit Noosa businesses and also critically it and the world  environment.

What do you think?

Very best wishes

John

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Thanks

Michael Donovan