 Good morning, John. I'm a really big fan of a YouTube channel called Technology Connections, where a guy talks about people movers and toasters and just all the bits and pieces that make our world work. He did a video recently on a piece of failed technology called the FlexPlay DVD. The whole video is super worth watching, but here's a quick summary. FlexPlay DVDs were a way to rent a DVD without needing to return them. They were sealed in an airtight bag. When opened, a chemical in the DVD would begin reacting with the oxygen in the atmosphere, and after two days of that, the DVD would be unplayable. I actually have right here the very DVD that he used in that video because I DM'd him and he sent it to me because I want to do an experiment. So FlexPlay was a bad idea for a bunch of reasons. But the reason we think it's a bad idea, the reason we all hate it, is because it seems extremely wasteful, right? You have created a whole DVD just to intentionally destroy it. There was a ton of backlash. People protested outside of the stores that sold them. And I'm here to tell you today that that was actually fine. But it also gives us a whole heaping helping of insight into how we imagine waste and why we do a bad job of it. So let's do my experiment. Let's put the FlexPlay DVD here on a scale and see how much it weighs. 16 grams. What about this plastic that kept my metamucil safe when it was shipped to me by Amazon.com? What about this sugar water bottle that has the name vitamin in it so that I think that it's healthy or something? What about this coffee cup that I literally took out of my garbage can because I didn't think at all about throwing it away? Now, you might be saying to yourself, but Hank, the DVD has more than just plastic and it's got whatever that shiny stuff is, right? But that shiny stuff? Yeah. And a heck of a lot less of it than is in this can. Now, I'm not saying that all these plastics have identical resource costs and life spans, they don't. But when somebody says like, just throw away the DVD, like my brain doesn't protest to that idea because I'm like intricately familiar with the life cycle of polycarbonate. So why? Why does my brain freak out about throwing away a DVD but not about throwing away a plastic cup? I think there's two reasons. First, we have been taught that DVDs are valuable. The inventors of FlexPlay were imagining DVDs as what they practically are which is a container that holds media. Just like this is a container that holds sugar water. But up until FlexPlay, the people selling DVDs were making the case that they were an exceptional experience, that they were almost a luxury product. Now, they knew that DVDs were actually way cheaper or would at least become way cheaper to manufacture than VHS tapes and indeed they are far less resource intensive than VHS tapes but they were shiny and they put them in big sturdy cases that are actually way bigger than they need to be which actually will use far more plastic than the DVD itself. And it worked. We see them as valuable even if they are just plastic with some foil inside. And second, it's new. When we first started getting bottled water people freaked out about all the plastic that was going into this and it always struck me as a little bit strange that we didn't like have a commensurate freak out about like the plastic bottles that contain a product that is far worse for humans and for the environment than water. Coke, after all, is just water with a bunch of like really resource intensive mega crops put inside of it. And in response to that backlash a lot of bottled water actually now comes in flimsier, thinner bottles with smaller caps that don't use as much plastic. Coke still comes in a very fancy bottle to give us the impression of a high quality experience. This plastic is even thicker because it's supposed to be an even more high quality experience. We rebelled against plastic being used for bottled water because to our brains everything that was the way that it is when we were kids is kind of just the way it is. It's much easier to question new things than to question things that have always been that way. That's a problem, especially when it comes to waste because I'm not saying it's okay to make disposable DVDs. It's not. But we should probably like think about throwing away a DVD every time we buy a bottle of Coke because in terms of waste those things are about the same. This video brought to you by Coca-Cola. Hell, no, it's not. John, I'll see you on Tuesday. Two things. One, I accidentally uploaded a Hank's Channel video to Vlogbrothers and it was over four minutes so I have another punishment brewing. And two, if you're up for a more in-depth conversation about the environmental footprint of these objects and materials come on over to Hank's Channel.