In 2011, people in the United States watched about 20.4 billion hours’
worth of movies and TV episodes online or on DVD, with an estimated 13%
of that total being streamed over the Internet. The carbon footprint for
that viewing—including emissions produced due to online viewing and
those generated during the manufacturing, packaging, and shipping of
disks, either directly to consumers or to stores where they’re sold or
rented—was about 10.5 million metric tons, a new study suggests. (One of
the largest contributors to that carbon footprint was vehicle emissions
generated by consumers on shopping trips either to buy a DVD or to rent
and then return it.) But a complete shift to video streaming, which
generates about 400 grams of carbon dioxide for each hour of movie or
television content viewed online, would
cut those total emissions to about 8.6 million metric tons, researchers report online today in
Environmental Research Letters.
That’s the same benefit that would be achieved by cutting off power to
almost 200,000 households. Which, to be honest, would make it a bit
harder to stream those movies.
