Evil Bin attempts to raise environmental awareness through mobile gaming
Bin there, done that
In an effort to raise awareness about recycling our rubbish, a new mobile and iPhone game has been released called Evil Bin, funded by London Waste and Recycling Board.
This is one of the first times mobile gaming technology has been used to promote public awareness (personally I prefer those tacky public information broadcasts from the '70s about not mixing cross ply and radial tyres) and has just been released on the App Store and through mobile networks. No BlackBerry, though.
The game requires you to starve the Evil Bin by catching recyclable waste in your green bin of power using the accelerometer (on the iPhone, at least).
Do remember not to play too much, of course, or you'll risk the ire of those who condemn unnecessary power use.
Naturally a politician wasn’t going to let a bit of media face time like this slip by, and Boris Johnson had this to say about Evil Bin:
“I am very excited that the new Recycle for London campaign is using innovative technologies to boost recycling and my message is to starve your bins and recycle, recycle, recycle.”
Hmm, odd that he’s so in support of gaming now it benefits his political campaign, especially after he accused the games industry of causing psychological and intellectual harm to children, when he wrote the following in The Telegraph:
“It is time to garrotte the Game Boy and paralyse the PlayStation, and it is about time, as a society, that we admitted the catastrophic effect these blasted gizmos are having on the literacy and the prospects of young males.”
But despite crazy-haired politicians wangling their way in on someone else’s hard work, you can go green with gaming by texting BIN to 62967 or picking up the game for free from the App Store (you might as well, now your tax money has paid for its development).
