First of all, renting reduces the amount of DVD's that are manufactured, thus decreasing pollution and carbon footprint associated with the manufacturing process. Also, if you buy a movie that you haven't seen yet, you may watch it and decide you don't want to keep it. Then what do you do with it? Best of all, if you rent rather than own, you eliminate the storage needs for a movie that you'll probably only watch a few times during the time you own it anyway.
Second, Redbox kiosks are stratigically placed in convenient locations like grocery stores, drug stores, fast food restaurants, and gas stations -- and you know how helpful that is for us lazy people. This allows us to complete multiple errands with only one stop. In turn, it reduces the amount of driving around town which lowers emissions and carbon footprint even further.
Lastly, it requires significantly less electricity, energy, and manpower to operate a kiosk versus brick and mortar store. With a kiosk, there is no need for employees to monitor the store during business hours, no requirements for water, electricity, lighting, heating/cooling, etc.
If this discussion has inspired you to stop and help the environment next time you're out at the store, Redbox has an offer to make the deal even better. Visit Redbox on Facebook and if you "Like" them, they'll send you a unique code for a free movie rental. The code can only be redeemed on May 12. Want to rent a movie a different day, here are some codes for anytime free rentals that you can try: BREAKROOM, DVDONME, or DVDATWAG (Walgreens locations only).
Blockbuster Express is similar in concept to Redbox. They are also offering a free movie rental when you use the code: BBXHERE. This code is valid through May 8th.
How about you: Do you ever rent from Redbox? Or do you prefer to go to a video store to select and rent movies?
Do kiosks save on electricity and energy? A single kiosk is surely more "green" than a Blockbuster store, but how many kiosks are now within a 5-10 mile radius? There are dozens near me, and I'm starting to wonder if a store wouldn't be more green.
ReplyDeleteAlso does renting reduce the number of DVD's produced? If they were only for purchase, maybe people would just stop buying them do to high costs. Also kiosks probably require more DVD's to be produced than 1 store because you have to spread out the DVD's over numerous places.
I think you make good points, but I would love to see actual research data that supports your claim. It could be very interesting.
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Sure, if DVD’s were only for purchase at a significant cost, people would start buying less. But try to convince movie producers, Disney, Warner Bros, Viacom, to do that…
ReplyDeleteI suppose if we really want to help the environment and reduce the number of DVD’s being manufactured, we should just rent/download movies over the internet, right? Netflix, Amazon, etc.