Netflix is Saving the World!

OK...maybe it's an overstatement to indicate that Netflix can save the world. As a new customer, I'm just pumped to have available movies around my house at all times. My wife and I can barely find time to watch a movie together and driving to the movie store, although just around the corner, just seems like another busy thing to do. I can now watch a 2-hour movie over a span of 19 days by watching short scenes while eating lunch, lying in my bed, eating a bowl of cereal, tying my shoes, picking up the living room, folding clothes, playing with my children, drinking water, flossing, writing thank you cards, blogging, or listening to my wife. It's great.

But someone out there, with way too much time on their hands, has figured out that Netflix is the environmentally safe way to get a movie to your house. Read below:

The total emissions from sending one billion DVDs to its customers is 320 tons. Keeping in mind that those DVDs are also returned to the same facility we need to double that result to 640 tons of CO2 emissions. To put this result into perspective, let's see what the alternative looks like. Let's say that the average drive to your local video rental store is 5 km (3 miles) and that the average vehicle gets around 20 mpg so that every trip to the video rental store uses 0.588 liters of fuel, releasing 1.77 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. If everyone gets only one DVD per trip, those one billion DVDs would amount to 1,770,000 tons of CO2 emissions. If you factor in the return trip, that amount increases to 3,540,000 tons of CO2!
The lesson in all of this is that mail order is more efficient than driving your personal vehicle (unless it's a bike). A study performed for the record label EMI by the Digital Europe Project compared the relative ecological impact of purchasing a CD at a store (which requires driving there), ordering it on-line (from Amazon for example), or downloading the music (iTunes) and came to a similar conclusion as this Netflix case.

Thank you Netflix for saving our climate. Polar bears will not be stranded because of you. I can watch Weekend at Bernie's 77 times and do no harm to the atmosphere. I no longer have to fear being consumed by a glacier-produced tidal wave while watching The Notebook.

And may I add...never do the Blockbuster online thing. I thought I would be different and start there. Big mistake. I apologize to everyone.