How green is your Wii?

While perusing the video games shelves at my local Target, I couldn't help but laugh when I spotted a Nintendo DS game called "Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol." Nintendo describes the game as "one of the first games based on the growing environmental movement," and in the game, you are a robot that fights toxic "Smoglings" by planting flowers and building park equipment in a virtual environment.

How hypocritical is this? Afterwards - and out of curiosity - I went home and googled "Nintendo" and "greenwashing." Lo and behold, I found an article where Greenpeace ranked Nintendo as one of the least environmentally-friendly "gadget" companies out there today, flunking because of its "global policies on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded."  In addition, Greenpeace says, "Nintendo completely fails to show any environmental credentials," that they continue to produce too many toxic gadgets and that they don't do enough to live up to their green pledges. 

In other words, while a company like Nintendo may try to tout green tendencies via video games like "Chibi-Robo," the company itself does a lousy job being green in real life. It's stuff like this that makes me mad, and should really make a person think twice about supporting these companies that fail to measure up to their green claims. Unfortunately, being "green" is probably the last thing on a person's mind when they're trying to hunt down the Wii console or latest Wii games for their kids' Christmas presents.

Here is the source link.

- Cassie H.

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