Last year, Kawee "Beam" Tanchararak invited Thais to vote yes or no on the referendum on the constitution and convinced us to stub out those cancer sticks on World Anti-Smoking Day.

Now the former member of RS Public's popular trio D2B is an ambassador for the World Wildlife Fund (Thailand) and he's pleading with young people to take care of Mother Earth.

"My parents brought me up to have a sense of responsibility," says the 27-year-old, who is studying for an MBA at Chulalongkorn University. "And my responsibilities for WWF are to increase environmental awareness as well as to promote this organisation and its several campaigns.

"I would like everybody to start protecting the environment now by turning off lights and electrical appliances when not in use, eating up their food because putrid leftovers create methane, which affects the ozone layer, and car pooling, which saves on petrol consumption."

The pop idol is also encouraging city folks to turn off the electricity for one hour on March 29 at 8pm and be part of the "Earth Hour" global campaign.

"It's the starting point to build up awareness about energy-saving," he says.

Beam shares his WWF ambassador title with such luminaries as Prince Berhert of Switzerland, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Haruhito of Japan.

"I can't be compared with those great people but I will do my best to live up to my responsibilities. I want to see more people get serious about environmental conservation," he says.

"Campaigning for shoppers to use cloth bags instead of plastic has become trendy. But surprisingly I see many people toting plastic bags inside their cloth bags.

"For me, the most imperative step is to use petrol more sparingly. That helps money too."

By Kitchana Lersakvanitchakul

badboy_69@dailyxpress.net

DailyXpress