Greenwashing Microsoft Style

Has anyone noticed Microsoft’s new campaign and website portraying the company as environmentally conscious and cheerfully hawking the companies Vista platforms’ energy savings? If you haven’t, and would like a very high budgeted example of greenwashing then you should give Microsoft.com/environment a look. Microsoft shows a gorgeous snow-filled mountain scene and talks about the wonders of saving energy for your organization; this is a notable aspect of Windows Vista, but completely overshadows the companies’ other endeavors, most notably the packaging of Microsoft products.

Microsoft is a large company, perhaps the powers that approved the environmental website have never been to a local store and looked at their companies’ retail offerings, or they didn’t receive a company-wide memo about the company’s packaging habits; regardless, the effect is a clear example of greenwashing, though you’d be none-the-wiser by looking at Microsoft’s self-professed environmentally friendly website. That of course is the point of greenwashing, cover up the bad with a smattering of the good…

Think on the companies packaging, how many of you have seen the solid plastic coffins that Windows Vista and other Microsoft applications come encased in? For Microsoft accessories, and their Xbox 360 platform particularly, well, good luck getting a new controller out of its plastic packaging. Seriously, you almost cannot open Microsoft accessories without a powerful set of scissors and an amazing amount of patience; apparently plastic has become a new renewable resource which is simply absurd.

Microsoft should know better than portraying the positive while blissfully continuing on with the environmental deprivations their company takes part in. Please visit our website and become informed on devastating consequences of greenwashing at http://sites.google.com/site/ecomerge2008/

-John O

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