[tfgg]

Honestly this sort of climate & environment tokenism frustrates me - spending a lot of energy trying to reduce and elimate things that barely matter (or even actually make things worse by displacement), while ignoring the big ticket items. At best it's innumerate, at worst it's greenwashing.

[Sankozi]

But nobody was doing that in this thread. Walteweiss was just pointing that Netflix DVD service closing has a significant positive side - less trash generated. Pointing it was called as "innumerate".

There are bigger problems for sure but there is also "there are bigger problems" fallacy (aka fallacy of relative privation).

[FeepingCreature]

The disagreement is precisely over whether the positive side is significant.

[im_z]

Again, ignoring the data centre side. It's not from thin air that you can stream.

[behringer]

Considering each disk is reused countless times, it wouldn't surprise me at all if streaming causes more pollution in aggregate.

[hombre_fatal]

What about shipping the disc back and forth?

[behringer]

It goes through the envelope sorting system. Incredibly efficient and due to ads being a usps money maker, you'll get mail regardless.

[bawolff]

> Honestly this sort of climate & environment tokenism frustrates me

As an hn'er you should be used to premature optimization ;)

[walteweiss]

I replied in the other comment, but I thought I’ll mention you as well. I agree that this is a tiny drop into the ocean, but I thing it’s still a positive change.

[Xylakant]

How much plastic does this actually produce? The DVDs are reused multiple times, as are the boxes. They are comparatively unlikely to end up in the environment, since they are in a closed and controlled environment - people are unlikely to just throw them out in the garbage. Packaging may be an issue. But there are many better ways to reduce plastic pollution - for example just driving a few miles less per year, or driving a lighter car: Tires are a much bigger source of plastic pollution and they shed microplastic directly into the environment and water runoff: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/tires...

I'd rather have people kick back on their couch and watch a Netflix DVD instead of feeling great that they saved so much plastic, and then smugly drive their SUV to the next shopping mall.

[iFreilicht]

I wonder if the total amount of energy required to stream the same movie from a datacenter across the country might even lead to more CO2-emissions in total. The internet isn't carbon neutral yet.

It's probably an impossible question to answer.

[Xylakant]

Maybe, but the point here was plastic pollution. And there, streaming clearly wins, but I believe only marginally.