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Natural Awakenings National

Earth Music: Digital Downloads Ease Emissions

The environment is reaping the reward of today’s trend toward accessing music via the Internet, pre-empting a trip to the store to purchase a CD in a plastic case. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory show relative savings in production and transportation energy costs and related carbon dioxide emissions of 40 to 80 percent for the digital download; the higher savings is achieved when users choose not to burn the music onto a CD. Film fans viewing movies on their computer screen similarly render a benefit to Mother Earth.

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