Mongolia will participate in this year’s Earth Hour campaign under the theme of reducing plastic use, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)-Mongolia said on Wednesday.

Earth Hour is a worldwide movement organised by the WWF since 2007 and will see millions of people across the world switching off their lights for one hour, from 8:30 to 9:30 pm on a specific day towards the end of March to help fight climate change.

Earth Hour 2019 is scheduled for the evening of 30 March; Mongolia has been participating in the annual campaign since 2010.

Buildings surrounding central squares of the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar and several provinces such as Khovd, Uvs, Bayan-Ulgii, Dornod and Khentii will be in darkness for an hour.

Mongolia has been focusing on reducing plastic use in recent years. It has announced to ban the use, sale, import and production of single-use plastic bags thinner than 0.035 mm across the country. This ban came into force on 1 March.

It is estimated that more than 2 million tons of waste, including 500,000 tons of plastic waste, are produced in the country each year. Out of the plastic waste, just less than 10 percent is recycled, according to the Mongolian Ministry of Environment and Tourism.