Renting Movies Is Green

Watching a movie can be a gamble, which is probably why you rented that flick in the first place. No sense in buying something you might turn off halfway through, right? By renting, you're also eliminating the need for tons of new DVDs to be produced and preventing unwanted ones from ending up in landfills.

In 2006, 1.6 billion DVDs were sold directly to consumers in the United States. That adds up to roughly 150 million tons of plastic and other ingredients-for just one year. DVDs are made primarily from polycarbonate, a kind of plastic created from crude oil. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), other materials involved in producing the discs and their cases include aluminum, acrylics, gold, chemical dyes, water, glass, silver, and nickel. The National Wildlife Foundation estimates that we toss out DVDs by the millions every year. When you rent a DVD, whether from a mail-in company, a video rental chain, a grocery store, or the library, you're not only saving yourself money but also keeping that disc out of a landfill.

To go a little greener: Take advantage of movie rental downloads for your computer or digital video recorder (DVR). This setup involves electricity you're already using and devices you already own. Plus, it eliminates the need to mail anything (and the greenhouse emissions from transporting the disc) or spend money on gas to get to a store. Not to mention the fact that it saves time. Currently, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, CinemaNow, and Movielink are just some of the companies offering legal movie downloads for computers and DVRs. Getting movies without DVDs? Now, that's a happy ending.