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!')."

How about...

...I get some chains and tie my Second Life avatar to some trees in the virtual forest?

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

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...

Actually, Dell's environmental initiatives are quite laudable:

Is Dell the brand for EcoGeeks? [ecogeek.org]

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

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...

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

Wow, that really raised my awareness of the value of raising awareness! I'm nominating your post for the 2007 Awareness awards.

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

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.

Ahh ...

... I can smell the virtual fresh air already.

What's the bet that...

the energy used to run the servers to render a virtual tree is about equivalent to burning a real tree?

Hurrah!

All we need now is a 'Seti@home' type 'growtrees@home' program
and the earth is saved!
yes, that will work.

McDonalds has real saplings in MN for free

McDonalds has real saplings in Minnesota for free on Earth Day.

Did you know that twice as much wood is grown in Minnesota compared to harvesting?

lmbo

The trees might offset the enormous amounts of methane generated from fat nerds farting and burping in second life.

Plant a real tree

Join the National Arbor Day Foundation [arborday.org] and they'll send you 10 living saplings for cheap (10-15 bucks).

Of course, that means that people might have to get outside once in a while.

Second Life offers Virtual Saps to Dell

So many jokes, so little time:

Dell offers new rootkit for Second Life: virtual trees.

Dell branches out into Second Life Phony Industry with Trunk service.

Dell leafs computer business to enter lucrative virtual nursery business.

Earth Day events at Avatar Action Center in SL

While Dell is a for profit company (whose equipment I happen to use and like), Avatar Action Center is a non-profit organization that is focussed on sustainability education and empowerment and is hosting special events all Earth Day in Second Life. This is an international effort with group participants providing information about wind and solar energy, short videos about global warming and alternative energy and several live music performances. Visit our sim in Second Life at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Undulosa/219/222/62 [slurl.com] and our web site at http://avataraction.org/ [avataraction.org] Happy Earth Day SimBuddha

I don't imagine

i can burn these "virtual trees" in my wood stove and keep warm?

Virtual trees, for a phony world, behind a sheet of glass. Servers and hosts eating power. Ya, that will help the world. Each tree takes a little bit more power to compute and render.

First virtual tree post

*

Viewed from above of course. There, I feel better already. Gotta go now, I wanted to take my humvee for an offroad drive today.

Planting trees

In America, when you kill a tree, you have to plant a tree (or rather, two trees). So we've got a law on the books that says papermills either tree farm; get trees from outside the country; use corn stalks; or have trees planted to replace the ones they kill. Development companies are pretty well stuck having trees planted when they tear out a forest to build houses.

Lame!!!

This is so lame on Dells part, I don't even know where to start.

Online Ordering Real Saplings Planted?

Is there a service which lets me click to plant a real tree somewhere on the real Earth?

I'd love to see a service which calculates the CO2 impact of, say, an email server (and its own operations), and orders trees planted to offset that CO2 by the amount trees consume during that time.

People could get periodic reports of their "email pollution" and the trees they've planted to balance it. With an offer to buy more trees to offset the rest of the Greenhouse pollution we generate, including writing and reading this message.

Hey assholes

Why not plant some real fucking trees and make a difference instead of this "feel good" marketing shit.

Here's an idea...

How about for a donation, you get a virtual tree-growing game or something, and the money goes to sponsor an actual tree planting or rainforest-buying program somewhere? A few dollars is enough to pay some kid on summer break to plant trees for an hour or so.

You could call it "SimForest." Pay-per-sapling. Premium prices for fancy trees. Runs on the desktop like a wallpaper. Lighting changes by time of day. Branches blow in the breeze...

Sorry. Getting distracted. Anyway, selling game content for charity isn't a horrible idea, but if it's just a feel-good thing and doesn't actually help, what's the point?

not a smart move

wow this has got to be the dumbest thing ever. i mean is this a cheap publicity gimmick or something resulting out of genuine environmental concern? since it won't really have any effect on the environment other than possibly dissuading real people from planting real trees, i have to surmise that it is a half baked ill conceived attempt at appearing to be environmentally friendly(not that dell isn't) that will actually result in further apathy for the environment.

"In memory of a real tree"

I miss the real trees. I hope the server farm that this virtual forest will reside in is green. It would lessen (but not eliminate) the pointlessness.

Meh. Try recreation eco-vandalism instead.

The stupid housing community I'm currently renting in keeps trying to grow grass in places that really don't want grass, using the usual massive seed-fertilize-water approach. They dumped some seed and overfertilized again this morning; I spread six cans of wildflower seed into the area while they were at lunch break. I have high hopes for colorful ground cover this time. =)

Virtual Trees?

*waits for Apple to hit back with the iTree*

I have a question....

Do I get to use these trees towards my Carbon Credit account?????

Re:You know, I see things like this

(Score:0, Flamebait)

Modded by somebody who's playing "The Game [startrek.com]". Beware! This is how it begins.