It’s all over the media these days; reminders that we all need to start to do our part, no matter how small to help reverse the catastrophic effects of global warming. As single human beings all we can do to help is recycle our garbage, buy environmentally safe products and conserve our energy usage. The bigger responsibility lies with the large corporations that supply us with endless store shelves filled with products.

Many companies have started to take notice and are aware of the publics newly learnt knowledge of which products harm the environment and which have been designed to help. Large chain supermarket stores now offer incentives, such as bringing your own reusable bag instead of using plastic ones and receive extra in store points for discounts. Some products are now packaged in 100% recycled or biodegradable materials, the innovative ideas seem to be limitless and companies are also finding their sales increasing as a result of going green.

A company that you wouldn’t expect to be joining the cause is ‘Ubisoft’ the large games corporation that sells PC and game console titles. They have lightened their packaging by including a digital manual instead of the usual paper leaflet insert that comes in each case. This might seem small, but if you take into consideration they sell around 6 million items per year, that would save 180 tons of paper and 2300 acres of small forest; all for a 10 page paper insert.

Ubisoft also plan to 100% recycled polypropylene for their DVD cases and 100% recycled cardboard for their PC game box titles. Though they would like to do this for all of their game titles it’s just not possible as companies like Nintendo and Microsoft want color specific boxes with light colors. When the recycled materials are cooked together they come out in a dark grey or black color that cannot be dyed white or lighter colors.