The planet Earth is a pretty cool place and without going off on some tangent that would seem more appropriate in some publication by Greenpeace, I have to say that in the last few weeks I’ve caught myself becoming a bit more environmentally conscious. Not because the thought of a planet sunk under the weight of water from melted polar ice caps scares the crap out of me or the fact that losing my planet freaks me out because it’s where I keep all my stuff. After all, if the planet begins to crush itself under the environmental stresses of the human population and the global effects therein, I won’t have anywhere to play my video games anymore. So, while wrapping my Christmas presents and realizing that over the course of this holiday season there is going to be a ridiculously massive amount of garbage produced in the name of family together, I threw together a little something I think that, while attempting to come off as minimally didactic as possible, should be able to green up your gaming habit just a bit going into 2011.
10. Buy Green Game Cases: If you haven’t notice them yet, it’s probably because you haven’t been looking hard enough when you pop the seal on a brand spankin’ new video game. They feel a bit lighter and thinner than the typical plastic gaming cases than you’ve previously had on your shelves or nestled gently on top of your gaming console, but they still serve the intended purpose – they keep your game safe from dust and damage when you aren’t playing through it. While it does have the telltale recycling symbol casually placed behind the game manual on the left side and lacks a bit of the snazzy style of the metal cases many of the special editions are coming with nowadays, they are environmentally conscious and actually contribute to less pollutants being pumped into the environment as a result of plastic and plastic byproducts used to create the cases by limited the necessary resources in their manufacturing.
9. Recycle Video Game Manuals: You don’t like your video game manuals and you prefer the in-game prompts or tutorials over the pages contained in the video game case? Cool. Don’t use it. I won’t even stop you on that one. But, if you’re not going to utilize them ever and you plan on hanging onto the game until the end of time – just recycle the manual. Really, take it out of the case, toss it in that blue recycling bin and call it day. If you ever plan on selling or trading the game though, it would behoove you to either keep the manual or scan it in and save it as an acrobat file for someone else sometime in the future. After all, I’ll be the first to admit that video game manuals are definitely not the intriguing bits of narrative they were in the past, they still serve a function as a point of reference to many of the people who choose to use them. Otherwise, they’re just taking up space that could be easily reclaimed and stored as data on a hard drive.
8. Reuse Game Discs: While video game discs can never be used in the same fashion as CD-RWs or DVD-RWs, thus condemning them to an existence as a singular form of media that can never be rewritten, they’ll either be played, sold, or sit and collect dust on the shelf of one of many of the vehemently studious collectors out there in the audience. And that’s okay. For the particularly bad games though, they can still be recycled or even used around the house because no matter how bad a game might be inside your console, it can always serve as a nice coaster for your cold beverage while you play a better game or be implemented into a classy mobile of video games to class up your gaming space a bit more. Whatever the case may be, there is always a way to reuse the things that the uncreative or unimaginative would consider nothing more than a piece of junk.
This feature top 10 list continues on the next page, please click below to see our next couple choices for the top 10 ways to stay green while gaming.
