Cutting out the CD habit

CDs are a fact of life in my world. As a Web person, I routinely get submissions of photos and other multimedia (even Word files) on a CD-ROM, particularly since my employer is paranoid about zip files.

While we can download music, watch movies online and store photos on Web sites, we just can't break the cycle of saving data, software and just plain "stuff" onto CD-ROMs.

According to Douglas Karr, who writes a marketing technology blog I read:

According the EPA’s poster, Lifecycle of a CD, 5.5 million CDs, their packaging and
millions of other music CDs are tossed each year without recycling. CDs and DVDs
are made from Aluminum, Gold, Dyes, various other materials - but most of all
Polycarbonate and Lacquer. Polycarbonate and Lacquer are generated directly from
crude oil.

The stats continue, every month 100,000 pounds of CDs and DVDs go obsolete as well. There’s no efficient means of recycling the materials either!

According to the Oil Industry itself, about 1.1 gallons of every barrel (42 gallons) of oil goes to petrochemicals.

So obviously the problem is not just the discs themselves but the habit we've caused. A few days ago I wrote about what you can do about those old CDs. But what can you do to break the cycle and keep new CDs from entering your life?

• Research to see whether the software is available as a download instead of purchasing a copy on CD. Even better, consider using Web-hosted software such as Google Documents instead of purchasing a copy of Microsoft Word.
• Consider "on-demand" movies or viewing them through online services.
• Karr writes: "Switch from backing up and transporting data on CDs and DVDs to USB Drives. USB drives hold more data and are portable, faster, and don’t wear out...Buy yourself a large portable drive for backing up your work and transporting it back and forth to work."
• And, for the diehards, Karr suggests eliminating your CD or DVD drives the next time you upgrade your computer.

Finding a new life for tired music

Each morning, en route to work, I pop in a compact disc into my car. And each morning, I sigh and mutter, Can't listen to that in front of "them," and hit fast-forward through all my "oldies" but goodies (?). So much for my trips down memory lane.

Guns n' Roses? Gone.

Poison? Plenty of phrases I'm just not ready to explain - or hear my child repeat.

Quiet Riot? Quite the eye-opener when your then 2-year-old parrots back "girls rock your boys" on the first time she's heard the song.

Ugly Kid Joe's "I hate everything about you?" (purchased after being dumped of my now-husband on Valentine's Day) Out of the question when you're trying to knock "hate" out of someone's vocabulary.

Keep laughing. I've probably got them all.... And for the record, my spouse is the bigger problem, with his penchant for burning custom compact discs.

While I'm not prepared to get rid of my compact disc collection just yet, there are some that are admittedly just cluttering up my bedroom. I could probably get rid of those demo CDs from my tenure at the college newspaper, but haven't. Frankly, no one would take them.

There are places you can go to recycle those CDs. Or you can be crafty and do something with them. I've seen them as elements in scrapbook pages. But there's much, much more that people have apparently tried in that bored moment on a rainy afternoon.

Make-stuff.com suggests these ideas (and many more):

• Christmas light reflectors or decorations
• Coasters
• Candle displays
• Recrafted into bowls

But the most creative use of old music I've seen is this: turn them into weights. Maybe for your New Year's Resolutions, you can tackle two bad habits?

Pass it on: Sites for swapping

Freecycle and craigslist are two great resources for passing along free (or inexpensive) items. And I'm still experimenting with Zwaggle, which allows you to trade children's items, with mixed results.

But what do you do with those piles of dust-collecting books or abandoned CDs?

A few Web sites exist that key into your hobbies and allow for free to low-cost swapping.

Among them:

Paperbackswap.com
Swapadvd.com
Swapacd.com

By sharing your items with other interested readers or listeners, you earn credits that you can redeem for swapped items of your own. While you're responsible for the shipping costs, you also don't have to purchase these items new.