Nintendo: The Stylish Option
Greenpeace recently released their quarterly guide entitled The Guide to Greener Electronics.
What’s the guide all about? In Greenpeace’s words:
“The Greener Electronics Guide is our way of getting the electronics industry to face up to the problem of e-waste. We want manufacturers to get rid of harmful chemicals in their products. We want to see an end to the stories of unprotected child labourers scavenging mountains of cast-off gadgets created by society’s gizmo-loving ways.”
Nintendo came bottom of the league with no public policy on toxics elimination or recycling. And although the guide describes the behaviour of electronics giants regarding toxic waste, energy usage is not taken into account – something I want to discuss here.
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It’s important to try and keep our chins up when outlining environmental issues – sometimes an extremely tough exercise, because I’m haunted by Nintendo’s name.
You browse their website, looking for clues as to who their target audience is, but you don’t need a keen eye for demographics to know that it is the younger generation that feeds off Nintendo’s products.
And in so doing, they’re feeding off the national grid to fire them to the next level of each game.
It bothers me that, just as humankind wakes up to carbon emissions, the generation behind me seems indifferent. I’m no eco-saint. Far from it.
How did I spend my leisure time when younger? On my bike, playing football, all the usual things. Now I feel old for even admitting that.
You speak to kids these days and ask them for their views regarding the energy usage resultant from computer games. Shrugs, a lack of concern, apathy. Climate change a million miles away. That seems the attitude here in the UK anyway.
Green energy is not a widespread commodity. Not yet. Until that becomes a reality, we must continue to tighten our grip on energy use per se.
And for that to become a reality, green alternatives must become the stylish options. Currently, the games console is the stylish option, environmentalism the choice of the martyr.
Responsible parenting and green issues central to a school’s curriculum are the voices of authority and therefore, by their very nature, a complete turn-off for the kids.
So how do we lead the young away from electricity? How do we inject style and fashion into what is still seen by the young as a lifestyle frought with sacrifice?
If the next generation are more reliant on electricity as a means to fending off boredom than ever before, where does the buck stop?
Sources:
Picture courtesy of Flickr
It is funny that Nintendo should be the game company targeted by Greenpeace. Interesting is a light term since Greenpeace is dead wrong on this one. For instance, nintendo’s “Wii” console consumes less than 1/10 of the energy of the other current generation consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3) To boot, The Wii is the most compact and smallest of all the systems and is about 1/5 the size of the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Nintendo gets singled out for some hazardous plastics? Hardly seems fair seeing as they are the only company that even considered power consumption for their product. Go bother someone else Greenpeace and stop barking up the wrong tree. Yes, Nintendo should have some policy on “toxics elimination” but they more than make up for it with a far more energy efficient product.