Dell Offers Virtual Saplings For Earth Day

theodp writes "The expansion of Dell's Plant a Tree for Me program into Second Life has the Silicon Valley Sleuth wondering if this represents a new low in Earth Day marketing tie-ins. You may wonder, too, after reading Dell's invitation to its Earth Day Party at Dell Island in SL ('get your own tree sapling to plant in Second Life!')."

Comments

Call it a "new low" if you will...

[kallisti777]

For Dell's environmental initiatives to make any difference in the real world, people need to get involved. That takes publicity and advertising. I'm sure we're about to get flooded by math majors explaining how each virtual tree required X pounds of fossil fuels to appear on the server, but frankly I don't care. Greenpeace prints their literature on paper, after all.

If this is really all we have to complain about, the world is already perfect. Kudos to Dell for finding a way to bring attention to their Plant A Tree program.

(Note: none of that was/is the opinion of my employer).

Re:Call it a "new low" if you will...

[asninn]

That's nice, but I fail to see what's so great about this. Unless I'm misunderstanding things, it's the customer that donates the money, right? Dell is just collecting and forwarding it, and while that is certainly nice, it's not really a big deal. Call me back when they actually donate money themselves. (And as for "virtually" eliminating lead in certain components etc... that's nice, too, but again, I fail to see what the big deal is, or how it sets them apart from their competitors.)

And in any case, "planting" trees on Second Life might not be a new low, but it certainly is pretty stupid - even if you can't or don't want to plant a real tree, it'd make much more sense to tell people "please leave your computer turned off and don't play Second Life today". Yeah, it'd just be a feel-good measure that'd hardly have any real impact, but planting *virtual* trees? Come on. That's such a blatant attempt at commercialisation that I can understand the submitter's sentiments.

Re:Call it a "new low" if you will...

[zCyl]

For Dell's environmental initiatives to make any difference in the real world, people need to get involved.

Err, yes. Everyone can get involved with planting virtual trees so they don't have to think about real ones?

I feel like this completely misses the point of Earth Day, since the focus seems to be on improving a fake environment.

Re:Call it a "new low" if you will...

[maxume]

What about Earth Day isn't a feel good measure for consumers? Planting trees and what not is cute, but it isn't going to do anything to mediate poor behavior the other 364 days of the year, except that it 'raises awareness', so I'm not sure attacking a bastard corporation that re-purposed resources that were going to be used anyway(unless you are on crack you won't think that Second Life's servers are working harder because of this) in order to help with the awareness raising makes much sense.

A much better way to promote preservation of natural environments is to simply give money to the WWF or some other organization that spends their time buying up massive tracts of land. That gives trees a chance to plant themselves for the rest of human civilization.

Re:McDonalds has real saplings in MN for free

[jimmydevice]

Rick Richardson (87058)
"Did you know that twice as much wood is grown (planted - fixed it for ya ) in Minnesota compared to harvesting?"

And the're probably all about 5" high or dead. Just like in the west.