Greenpeace Down on Games Industry, Logic Flawed?

Earlier this week Greenpeace went after the games industry a bit, coming down on hardware manufacturers for poor environmental practices. Nintendo and Microsoft in particular got poor scores from the organization. Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog notes, though, that their methodology is a bit odd. It's not so much that Nintendo's environmental policies (say) are all that bad - they're just not readily available on a website. "The research in general appears lazy. Nintendo's failing grade appears to be based entirely on this entry in the corporate FAQ, which briefly summarizes some of the steps the company has taken to protect the environment. Anything that's not covered there is simply rated "No Information." Similarly, all of the information on Microsoft originates from press materials and corporate statements on the company's web site. Clearly, Greenpeace did not perform an exhaustive evaluation of chemical use through the manufacturing pipeline."

Comments

Criticisms

[fistfullast33l]

First, the original article should link to the original Greenpeace report.

Second, Greenpeace does provide suggestions, just not offered as part of the report. You can find links to their reports by starting here. This one (PDF warning!) provides suggestions for ways to reduce environmental impact in electronics. Personally, I don't see why it's Greenpeace's responsibility to dictate to a company how to make their product. Nor do I think that company wants Greenpeace to interfere in their design.

If there's misinformation in the report, that's something that should be addressed. But do we really need more policy makers interfering in the technology industries? I think we have enough of that already.