Green Gift Scene

The thought crossed my mind a few days back when I was helping my wife locate our Christmas tree ornaments in the basement. Over in the corner was a box that I didn’t recognize and figured I’d take a peek to see what was in it. Needless to say, what I found was a bunch of old music cd’s from my college days. I got to thinking about what to do with them as they were obviously not being used and taking up space in my basement. I also started thinking about how I was able to live without them even though I listen to music every day.

Well, I’ve been listening to music I’ve downloaded legally since college and started thinking of all the waste involved with purchasing music cd’s so I started searching the internet for some information about music cd’s and the environment. What I found was quite interesting. Did you know that:

• In any given year in the United States, over 1.2 million pounds of compact discs go to landfills and incinerators.
• CDs and their jewel cases are made from some nasty materials which include: polycarbonate plastic, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), petroleum-based paints and lacquers. Not to mention, that less than one percent of post consumer PVC is recycled.
• When the above materials are burned, the chemical compounds released not only contribute to global warming but can contain cancer causing dioxins.
• That simply eliminating the physical distribution of digital goods like music can significantly reduce the impact to the environment both locally and globally.
• That downloading digital data can help save almost 1 kilogram of global warming emissions per cd.

Now, it is this last two points that I’d like to address a bit further. How do we eliminate the physical distribution of digital goods like music? I for one have used a few music services over the years and wanted to give my take on them for those of you who are music aficionados.

Music services such as Napster, Rhapsody and iTunes are great in that they provide a vast array of music to fit anyone’s taste all right at your computer. The ability to download or stream music is far easier and more efficient than driving to the music store for the latest release.

Now some folks have said to me over the years that they do not like the music services as they are too restrictive in how they allow the user to use the music file. Most people state that they want their music easily transferable to their personal MP3 player. I too had this complaint as the music services I’ve used put restrictive digital rights management (DRM) licenses on the music file which complicates the transfer of the music file to my MP3 player.

Well, over the past few weeks, I’ve discovered a solution to that pesky DRM license issue. I’ve been getting all my music from Amazon.com. Yes, can you believe it? One of the nation’s largest online stores now has electronically delivered music with no DRM restrictions!

So download some tunes and help keep dangerous pollutants out of the environment. Can’t get much better than that, can it? Rock On!