New Videogame Packaging Helps Save the World

With new Eco-Boxes, you can now save the world with every Xbox 360 game you purchase.

In an effort to reduce waste and the amount of CO2 emitted in the production of disc cases, the Viva Group designed the Eco-Box. The new packaging, already in use by movie companies for the last two years, reduces the amount of plastic used in traditional boxes by 20%. The Eco-Box is being used by Microsoft for Xbox 360 games and Viva is in talks with Sony and Nintendo to provide the packaging for PS3 and Wii games.

Kyle Sheppard, Manager of Business Development at Viva, claimed that retailers like Walmart actually spearheaded the initiative to curtail the amount of waste that packaging creates all over the world. "Walmart even introduced a packaging scorecard with certain criteria that must be met, including reducing all packaging by 5% by 2013," Sheppard said. "The Eco-Box already exceeds this goal for the entertainment industry."

Oddly, the Eco-Box doesn't have much to do with reducing the bottom line for game manufacturers. "With the rise in material prices over the past few of months, if anything, the Eco-Box has allowed publishers to maintain the price they were paying for boxes during the first half of this year," Sheppard said. "This really isn't a cost cutting move, at least not at this point." It's actually about saving the world.

As Sheppard puts it, "A hypothetical new Xbox 360 release of 1 million units would have a 31,000 lbs reduction in CO2 [emissions] by switching from the standard Xbox 360 box to the Xbox 360 Eco-Box." That's 31k lbs less CO2 in our atmosphere for each million Xbox games made.

This is the kind of story which warms the cockles of my heart. Now if we could abolish the frightfully wasteful practice of wrapping Christmas gifts, the human race might last on this planet a few years longer.

Source: IGN