Quick: what’s less collectible than vinyl, less fun than an 8-track, and less durable than a cassette? If you guessed the CD, you win.
Compact discs and DVDs are piling up in landfills at a speedy rate. By contrast, digital music produces no waste materials–not even your Municipal Waste MP3s will result in any extra debris for someone to stumble over years from now. Perhaps you are already so organized as to have digitized your music collection–but what did you do with the jewel cases?
DVD and CDs can be recycled; discs containing personal information can be shredded, then sent off for recycling.
Freerecycling.com is one of the few companies in the US that recycles CDs and DVDs–a CD/DVD recycling container can be ordered from them and put to use right away.
We already know that companies that manufacture or sell CDs are intensely interested in recouping funds from digital sales, but we could all benefit if they focused a fraction of their efforts on properly recycling CD jewel cases and CDs.
It’s shocking to learn that Target, the lovable big-box retailer, served SF-based independent messenger bag company
Timbuk2 a cease-and-desist order for its ingenious use of recycling plastic shopping bags. Why? Because the Target bulls-eye logo would sometimes be visible on some of the finished bags.
Timbuk2 reported, “We recently received a cease and desist from our good friends at Target. Timbuk2 has been asked that we ‘cease use of TBI’s Bullseye Design mark on your Lamitron bags.’ We are now going through the ridiculous process of identifying and removing any Lamitron bag that contains the Target logo. We’ll keep you posted when we finally get through all this.”
How is it that the bag itself serves to advertise the store, but the same bag reused and recycled into something permanent is copyright infringement? Shame on you, Target.
Timbuk2 has stopped producing the Lamitron messenger bags. The questions remains: why are individuals always told to reduce their carbon footprint, while manufacturers and huge retailers sue companies that find innovative, inexpensive ways to reduce and reuse recyclable materials?