Green Tunes Online

Go green and download music online. It's an unexpected perk of downloading your favourite tunes - that you are helping reduce the carbon dioxide emissions created when compact discs are transported to retail outlets.

A study financed by Microsoft and Intel and written by two academics at Carnegie Mellon University and a third affiliated with Stanford University, found that buying an album digitally reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 40 to 80 percent relative to a best-case scenario for purchasing a CD.

Downloading your music to hard drive and playing it off a music server without ever burning it to CD is the best option for the environment, and happily is also the most convenient option - particularly if you have an automated sound system like multi room audio.

The next best scenario is burning it to CD yourself, followed down the list by ordering it online and having it delivered by light-duty truck. The more carbon-intensive options include express air shipment of the CD or driving into a shop to buy one.