Volume 14, Issue 4 ~ January 26 - February 1, 2006

Got an Environmental Question? Send it to: EARTH TALK, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881. Or submit your question at: www.emagazine.com. Or e-mail us at: [email protected].
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

How Green is Digital Music?

The new wave of MP3 players spells relief for landfills

What are the environmental implications of the proliferation of iPods specifically and digital music in general?

—Mike Romano, San Francisco

 

The advent of digital music and other forms of entertainment downloaded over the Internet has staggering repercussions for not only the music industry and the consumer experience, but also for the environment.

Analysts estimate that every year American consumers buy about a billion compact discs, most of which eventually end up in landfills or incinerators. Since CDs are a mix of polycarbonate, plastic and aluminum, they don’t easily break down and are not easily recycled. They are also not biodegradable, so they won’t break down in landfills. When incinerated, they release toxic fumes into the air.

In contrast, songs downloaded from the Internet consume only hard-drive space and don’t contribute directly to the waste stream. To get rid of downloaded music, one need only drag it to the trash symbol on the desktop. As of January 2006, consumers have downloaded more than 850 million songs via Apple’s iTunes service alone. If all this music had been copied to CDs, it would have filled up 85 million disks.

That’s not the whole story, of course. Downloaded music has to be played, and a large amount of e-waste, or electronic waste, is already clogging landfills. Consumer electronics contain large amounts of toxins such as lead, mercury and cadmium. So when computers, monitors and MP3 players end up in landfills, they can contaminate the surroundings and become a serious health issue.

iPod-maker Apple has come under fire from the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a group advocating for clean computer production and disposal. The group charges that Apple’s hardware recycling program, which accepted 1,500 tons of old equipment last year from consumers, is woefully inadequate, and that Apple has been lobbying against legislation that sets up such takeback programs. They also claim that iPod batteries wear out too soon, prompting consumers to junk the gadgets prematurely. Apple disputes the charges, claiming it is one of the most environmentally responsible businesses in the industry.

But music aficionados need to hear the sounds they love, so digitally downloaded music seems to be the more environmentally friendly choice, especially if consumers make efforts to recycle as much of their e-waste as possible. Apple, Dell, HP and IBM all offer low-cost ways to recycle hardware directly.

Meanwhile, some groundbreaking new CDs, one made from corn and another partly from paper, are on the horizon. Sanyo has teamed up with NatureWorks (formerly Cargill Dow) in the production of MildDiscs made from corn. One ear of corn can make 10 CDs. And Sony has developed the Blue-Ray disc that is 51 percent paper. It can be cut with scissors and can hold about half the data of a computer hard drive.

But until such innovations become de rigueur, environmentally conscious CD buyers will have to be content passing on their old CDs to friends, selling them to used record stores or sending them to recycling centers for e-waste, such as the Washington-based GreenDisk.

 

For more information:

• Apple Product Take-Back: www.apple.com/environment/recycling/Computer.

• Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition: www.svtc.org.

• GreenDisk: www.greendisk.com.

Have an environmental question?

Send it to: [email protected].

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