Make Waves, Fight Ocean Pollution With Oceanopolis - The New Facebook Game From Greenopolis

What if you lived on an island home and all your resources had to come from your island and your waste had to stay there? How would you live, what would you do differently?

You now have the chance, because Greenopolis has launched our new Facebook game Oceanopolis - play now at http://apps.facebook.com/oceanopolis/

Oceanopolis is a fun, interactive and educational game that engages players worldwide in stopping waste and recapturing resources using recycling & up-cycling principles. In Oceanopolis you get to live on your very own tropical island-a dream for most people. While on your Island your challenge is to keep your island, the surrounding ocean and other islands clean and green through capturing and up-cycling plastic and glass bottles, steel and aluminum cans and cardboard boxes. By doing so you clean up your island and keep society’s waste out of the surrounding ocean so they don’t wind up as trash in the Pacific Gyre! You can also rescue threatened sea animals as you restore their ocean habitat.

The game mimics real life; after all, we do live on an island in space –our Earth – and keeping her clean and green is all important! The principles at play in Oceanopolis are the very ones we need to adopt and practice in the real world.

To make your island home even more perfect, you can also:

• Keep your island and ocean waters clean – Players are challenged to maintain a clean virtual environment by recycling and up-cycling, or turning useless waste into new products, in order to accumulate points.

• Challenge your friends – Oceanopolis’ social features allow players to involve their friends in their positive actions. Players can clean each others’ islands – and earn more points – invite friends to visit and send gifts to each other.

• Create a sustainable community – Build an island from the ground up, and sell items from your sustainable village while managing and exploring your island and surrounding ocean waters. Players can also purchase and manage multiple islands.

• Rescue animals injured by pollution and share them with friends – As a part of protecting the island’s environment and ecosystem, players can rescue injured animals and invite friends to help nurse them back to health.

• Play to earn real rewards – As part of the Greenopolis Recycling System, which encourages recycling through a robust rewards program, players may redeem points in-game or combine their online balance with their points earned from real-life actions such as writing a blog post at Greenopolis.com or recycling at Greenopolis Recycling Kiosks, located across the country. The choice is yours—points throughout the Greenopolis recycling system may be used in Oceanopolis, turned into cash donations, or exchanged for real discounts at thousands of restaurants, theaters and real-world establishments.

• Upgrade your island with virtual treasures – Earn points to purchase virtual gifts for friends, improve your island environment, upgrade your avatar with sunglasses or custom t-shirts, send a message in a bottle, grow plants and nurture wildlife, or even buy transportation such as boats and submarines to further explore your surroundings and tackle challenges on the open seas.

But Oceanopolis is more than just fun and games. Oceanopolis ties into the real world through Greenopolis recycling kiosks and rewards. Oceanopolis exposes players to Greenopolis stories and ongoing learning by educating users on recycling, conservation and ocean gyre issues. It rewards players in the real world for virtual actions, and creates real world action through virtual gaming

Take a minute right now to check out the Oceanopolis Facebook page and see our latest updates . Help us make the game an even more engaging and useful tool for fun, learning and action.

I’ve been playing the beta version, and it really is addicting. There’s always another can, bottle or box to pick up and recycle, and another animal to help. Kind of like the real world, there’s always another step to take toward a sustainable planet. I’ll see you in the islands!

To celebrate the launch of Oceanopolis, the Greenopolis Foundation will donate $1 for the first 25,000 people who tweet the following message during the three days of Casual Connect (July 20 - 22):

“Make waves. Fight ocean pollution with http://apps.Facebook.com/Oceanopolis #Oceanopolis”

All proceeds will go to Ocean Aid, a 501c3 non-profit that will fund research into pollution-filled ocean gyres through an annual benefit concert. Ocean Aid has the chance to receive a gift as large as $25,000 from the three day tweet-a-thon. Every person who tweets the message will also be entered to win two tickets to the Ocean Aid concert. The Twitter event highlights the strong connection between real world and virtual actions in Oceanopolis, as fighting ocean pollution is a large part of the title's gameplay. To check out the game, visit http://apps.facebook.com/oceanopolis/.

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