Greenpeace slams Greenpeace has released its latest Guide to Greener Electronics report, ranking Nintendo and Microsoft as some of the world’s least eco-friendly electronics companies. Greenpeace_ecometer How each company stacks up in Greenpeace's eyes The report, which has been expanded from previous versions to include TVs and games …
I somehow knew the first comment would be along those lines when I saw Sony near the top of the scores. Not intended to be poking fun directly at yourself, it just made me laugh because it was exactly as predicted :)
Perhaps Nintendo should start a new ad campaign? "Buy a Wii.....get more exercise than other consoles.....you'll need it to escape the floods when our poor ecological awareness destroys the planet." Think it'll catch on?
Greenpeas want eco action. Nintendo doesn't file a report with them telling them what eco actions they're taking. Greenpeas scores them null points for no eco action (confusing action with form filling, no form filling means no action).
Nintendo, look, it's not enough to make a console with no PVC in it, you also have to file a form 685b, Addendum 4 with Greenpeas , because as you know, failure to fill in forms, increases the amount of PVC you use by transwarp reverse polymerisation.
Look at it this way, if you were the worlds biggest PVC user, Greenpeace (the old real one) would have people lay down across the road to block PVC delivery trucks going in to your factory. But this is Greenpeas, the sponsored cuddly one, people called Tarquin and their little goaties sitting in media offices driving big Mercs planning Media events on their sidekicks. Not that messy one that stopped real world problems with real world actions.
"The eco organisation also said that Acer and Panasonic both need to improve reporting on recycling levels."
Exactly, it's the *reporting* they need to improve. Specifically the reporting to Greenpeas who make the media events.
All of the "more information" links from Here:-
http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/greener-electronics-nintendo-r.pdf
merely point to here:-
http://www.nintendo.com/corp/faq.jsp#environment
So it kind of looks like Greenpeace's 'research' was limited to sniffing around Nintendo's website. Highly authoritative, then.
... with Greenpeace, they've got more spin than 100 Blairs. They'll report stuff as fact, when it may not be, just that they weren't given the info they needed, rather than doing some research. No doubt the BBC will pick it up and run with it, like it usually does. Greenpeace - Spin and terrorists.
Pah! Who gives a flying FCEK ;) what green peace say or do. they run around claiming to be eco friendly and whatnot but surely all their collective bluster and hot air must be contributing to "Global Warming". And global warming, what another load of old bollucks! Its a global cycle which would happen whether naturally occuring carbon was in the atmosphere or not!!! Remember a few millenia ago britain was a desert, and a few more before that it was inder a mile of ice and not a Combustion Engine, Nintendo Wii or ecowarrior in site!
They are all cNUTS!
You can tell an NGO has lost all right to any respect when it starts seeing itself as equivalent to a government organisation and believes that companies are *obligated* to waste their employees' time sending it reports instead of serving customers.
Ignore Greenpeace. They contribute nothing to the world but blather. Stop listening and they'll go away. Greenpeace are merely what happens when trolls organise and then are stewed for 30 years.
For people claiming the Wii uses less power than a PS3 or XBox 360 - nonsense.
Wii's spend most of their lives in a lower power always on state, waiting for "surprises" that Nintendo has yet to deliver. So while the Wii might consume less power while playing games, it is a complete waste of power when it is idle. The PS3 and 360 are power hogs in operation, but they are both frugal in standby.
The upshot of this is that if you played a console 1 hour a day, the chances are that the Wii consumes as much power as its rivals. The Wii really should ditch that always on power mode - it's completely pointless since it wouldn't take more than 3 seconds at startup to check for updates and a crippling minute or so to fetch them if by chance Nintendo ever release any worth caring about.
"So while the Wii might consume less power while playing games, it is a complete waste of power when it is idle."
Not according to this review:
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-4.htm
It's standby power and idle power consumption way below their rivals power consumption.
i.e. Wii Idle 13.5 watts, XBOX360 157 watts, PS3 177 watts.
Standby Wii 1.3 watts, XBOX360 2.5 watts, PS3 1.9 watts
"s completely pointless since it wouldn't take more than 3 seconds at startup to check for updates and a crippling minute or so to fetch them if by chance Nintendo ever release any worth caring about."
Ahh OK, you mean if you switch on that Connect24 thing, but you don't need to do that to get upgrades it does it each time you switch into the control panel. I think the last upgrade they did was to add a parental filter control to the internet BTW.
When talking about Microsoft.......
"a long time for the elimination of toxic chemicals from its products."
LIKE THE VENOMOUS POISON IT IS!
Also, like all other boffins before me, this is just looking at the product as is, its not taking into account the "eco-credentials" of the product while in use, hence its useless.
It's hardly a big effort to turn your Wii off at the mains. Or a 360, for that matter, since it'll go get clock settings and the like from the net as soon as you turn it on.
Also, you can turn off the automatic updates and make the standby as frugal as the other consoles, if that's your thing.
@Block: Power usage over the lifetime of a product pales into insignificance when compared to the energy used to manufacture it.
@Whingers: It's hard work, isn't it, thinking about how we're the generations responsible for the destruction of so many habitats and the species that live in them, eh?
"Its a global cycle which would happen whether naturally occuring carbon was in the atmosphere or not!!!"
eh?
firstly, you need to be pulled up for your unacceptable assault on punctuation; one ! will suffice, sir.
secondly, what are you on about? i _think_ i understand what you mean and you just expressed yourself poorly; it's not the naturally occurring carbon that's the problem, it's all the crap we're putting there. i suspect, that like a lot of people, it suits you to believe what you've written because you don't have to face the fact that you might be contributing to the problem. like we all are.
either that, or you're just a bit 'fick'.
yeah but comparing a wii to a ps3 is like saying my mini uses less power than my ferrari. they arent comparible. wii is a rebadged gamecube with a funky controller. ps3 is a media centre, HD player and the best game console on the planet (and i have both). and with games like heavenly sword and drake's fortune upcoming you cant moan about the spread of games really.
If you actually tried reading the page in context, it might help. Yes, they didn't measure power consumption. But no, that's not what the whole thing is *about*. The context is:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics
"This has caused a dangerous explosion in electronic scrap (e-waste) containing toxic chemicals and heavy metals that cannot be disposed of or recycled safely. But this problem can be avoided. We are pressing leading electronic companies to change; to turn back the toxic tide of e-waste."
This is a campaign *specifically about the handling of dangerous waste from electronic products*. That is the only context the chart is presented in. It's not Greenpeace's fault if a bunch of lazy journalists grab the chart, free of any context, and present it as "A Complete Environmental Evaluation Of Everything Ever", which it clearly is not supposed to be.
And yes, Nintendo score zero because they provide no information. Of course they do. What else could you possibly score them? The table is based on the company's policies on eliminating the use of dangerous chemicals in the manufacture of their products, and on their policies for taking back and recycling or correctly disposing of their products at end of life. If Nintendo provides absolutely no information about their manufacturing policies or any takeback programs they provide, what can you possibly score them except 0?
Sheesh, try some critical thinking once in a while, it won't hurt.
Spleen, if all companies do nothing but look after their customers, everyone gets screwed. Would you happy with a nuclear power plant that was run with wonderful efficiency and provided its customers with cheap, reliable power - but dumped all its nuclear waste, untreated, into the river nearest to your house? Of course not. But it'd be serving *its customers* just fine. This is an analogous situation: manufacturers have a degree of responsibility with regards to the safety of the material their products are made with, and ensuring that the eventual disposal of said products is done in a manner which is not harmful to anyone's health. If you're going to dispute this, by all means feel free to start a campaign against all public health and safety laws.
Iain, sadly it's rather hard to turn things off at the mains in many places (including here in Canada), as wall sockets do not have switches. Unplugging and replugging things all the time gets annoying and not many people have the patience for it (I try to as much as possible). Happily, all current generation consoles actually have extremely low power drain at standby (1-3W, except the Wii, which is 10W if you leave Connect24 enabled, but 1W if you disable it).
Yeh, right, they're terrorists. They don't go around blowing things up or killing people, but hey, they *dare* to disagree with self-appointed lord of the universe Hagar, which is of course the defintion of terrorism - "Anybody who doesn't think exactly like me and do whatever I want them to".
Everybody has the right to their own beliefs and opinion, but you don't have an automatic right to have your ideas taken seriously if they're stupid. If you had the slightest argument against them, you could have presented that, but instead you just sit there like Humpty-Dumpty, insisting that words mean whatever you want them to mean. So if you want your beliefs to be taken seriously, you'd better say what they are and why anyone should believe you, rather than just calling names at anyone who you don't like.
"yeah but comparing a wii to a ps3 is like saying my mini uses less power than my ferrari"
And which of the two is better for the environment do tell?
@mr Williamson
i was always told that null != 0.
What with one being a lack of information and the other being a number... The idea that a non-response means the worst possible outcome is guesswork. Anyone think nintendo are in fact worse than all those other companies? maybe but how can anyone be sure?
The cynic in me might think that greenpeace want all these companies to reply to them so that they can position themselves as a non-official monitoring body rather than a political activism body. Non replies would jeapardise this goal, so giving non replies a 0 might encourage said companies to tow the line and reply next time (to prevent bad PR).
they could've just done a 'no information provided', yes. personally I'd use 'no information provided' for use of hazardous materials in manufacturing, but a 0 score for takeback programs (because a takeback program effectively doesn't exist if you don't tell anyone about it; a statement about its existence is more or less a necessary prerequisite for having one in any meaningful sense).
I wish they were bloody terrorists (or activists or however you want to call them) then maybe they'd do something about the Japanese whaling like they used to (ie ramming ships etc.) instead of the current thing of sailing along next to the whaling vessel with a banner saying save the whales. Yeah thats going to work!
As for this report, who gives a rats ass? Does anyone honestly think this will stop anybody from buying a Wii that was already going to buy one? Or make people buy PS3's instead? Nope... didnt think so...
You really want to update your PS3 rants, you know. Heavenly Sword isn't 'upcoming'; it came out a few months back. You may have missed the info, however, on the grounds that it turned out to be a load of rubbish. Modern fanboys have moved on to Little Big Planet and MGS4 as their upcoming saviours.
Yes, the PS3 is more powerful technically than the Wii. But not ten times more powerful, and certainly not ten times more fun.
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