“We are THE place to build real life in Minecraft. We are a volunteer community of Minecraft builders from around the globe and we are recreating the earth in 1:1 scale in Minecraft. Every house, every shed, every mountain,” (BuildTheEarth, 2020)
“The biggest Minecraft project is Build the Earth, an ambitious community-driven effort to recreate the entire planet in Minecraft (2011, Mojang). The project was started by Minecraft YouTuber “PippenFTS” (USA) in March 2020 with the release of a video asking for build contributions from the wider Minecraft community. Now, with the help of over four thousand builders and hundreds of build teams, Build the Earth dwarfs any other Minecraft project both in terms of number of people involved and scale,” (Guinness World Records, 2022).
Since its launch in 2020, Build The Earth achieved much recognition within the Minecraft community. Builders from all over were encouraged to contribute whatever they could, and avid fans jumped at the chance to be a part of something exciting. However, progress in the past few years slowed as builders fought over the importance of quantity versus quality. Awe-inspiring mega-builds with high aesthetic appeal drew in supporters via photos while volume (quantity) builders filled in the world around the builds to attract in-game explorers. With volunteers unable to agree on building techniques, collaboration in recent years halted.
A similar quality vs. quantity dispute similarly exists in the waste management world. Managing and processing waste is expensive. While collecting waste of all kinds is better for local ecosystems, it is often too pricey to invest in trash, recycling, electronic waste, and compost services. Consequentially, all types of waste end up in the same dumpsters and all types of waste end up in the landfill.
So, I have to ask myself; is removing a greater volume of unsorted waste better than removing a smaller volume of categorized waste? The former enables parks to stay cleaner while the latter reduces the total volume of trash dumped in a landfill. How do I decide which one is “better” than the other? Maybe I can find a third option.
References
Build the Earth. (2020). Overview. Build The Earth. https://www.linkedin.com/
company/build-the-earth/about/
BuildTheEarth. (2024, August 18). City center [Image]. BuildTheEarth.
https://buildtheearth.net/fr/gallery
Guinness World Records. (2022). Biggest Minecraft project. Guinness World
Records. Retrieved September 3, 2024, from
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/
734997-biggest-minecraft-project
