Wendy's Blog

The era of CDs has been long gone. For the past decade, the media industry has found a way for consumers to replace their buying habits with digital purchases. Music, movies, and even books and magazines can all be found online these days, and consumers have quickly adapted to these resources. The main two reasons why consumers have chosen buying digitally are the time saved from going into stores and the reduction of energy consumption it brings.

But what most consumers don’t realize is that their MP3 players (the ones they frequently replace) are made of heavy metals and toxic chemicals, which eventually end up in landfills. They also don’t realize the energy and carbon emission from the gigantic servers used to provide the platform. (with the size equivalent to football stadiums)

So even though the energy use and greenhouse emission of downloading music has less impact environmentally than music CDs, consumers need to take a look at the impact the use and disposing of MP3 players has on the environment.

This is rather interesting because consumers are often blinded by the limited information that is carefully packaged by the businesses and often don’t seek to explore further about the issue. If only consumers are willing to take the time to acknowledge the problem, their carbon footprints can be reduced even further.

Original article can be found here.

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