This may be a no brainer, but it has been confirmed that downloading music or movies is more environmentally friendly than buying them at the store. If you need numbers to convince you, chew on this: making one CD or DVD uses about 3200 grams of carbon emissions, which includes the transportation needed for getting it to market. Downloading alone saves 80 percent in carbon emissions over buying, and that includes both the manufacturing of the case and the shipment to the place that sells them. Except for the need to have CDs/DVDs air transported or shipped conventionally, the cases give off more carbon emissions to produce than anything else, totaling at roughly 500 grams of CO2.
So, if you have downloaded tunes and movies to your computer or an iPod, that’s the best in green savings. But if you download and then burn them to CDs or DVDs, you’ll drop those carbon emissions to just a 40 percent savings. Although you are saving a lot in transportation coasts, you are still paying in CO2 for the manufacture of the disc.
The worst part about CD and DVD use is that they can be recycled, but almost nobody does. Literally millions of CDs, DVDs and their plastic sleeves end up in landfills every year, and because they are plastic, they will not biodegrade.
Package wise, there are green ideas to reduce carbon emissions even farther. Using a packaging technique called Digipak, this concept replaces all plastic, except for the holder of the CD or DVD, with a cardboard-type of paper product that will eventually biodegrade in a landfill. Other similar packaging concepts are also being employed with names like WowWallet, JakeBox, Discbox Slider and others that are much more environmentally friendly, some even are 100 percent recycled and like the WowWallett, are actually marketed as an eco-friendly packaging concept.
That’s one of the things you can do to help. If you can’t or don’t want to legally download music, buy your CDs/DVDs in responsible packaging if you have that choice. Save the travel cost in your vehicle and buy them online. Mass shipping from the USPS or a carrier like UPS, saves carbon emissions simply because they are going that way regardless, and one more stop doesn’t add much to the environment.
Because Action speaks louder than words, you now have a little bit of information on carbon emissions, CDs/DVDs, and what you can do to help.
Source: BecauseAction.com
