Self-Destructive Behavior

It sounds like a bad movie. Wait, it IS a bad movie. A bad DVD, to be precise -- at least from an environmental standpoint. A division of Walt Disney this August will begin selling DVDs that self-destruct after 48 hours, dubbed EZ-Ds. After an EZ-D's plastic packaging is opened and it's exposed to oxygen, the disk plays perfectly for 48 hours; then a chemical reaction makes it unreadable and consumers can toss it in the trash. Environmentalists are not impressed. "It's unintelligent and illogical to take a durable, reusable product like a DVD and turn it into a product that becomes waste in 48 hours," said David Wood of the Computer TakeBack Campaign. Flexplay, the company that manufactures the disks, says buyers could mail the old EZ-Ds off to a company that recycles DVDs. But enviros point out that the target market for EZ-Ds seems to be the supremely lazy, folks who are not likely to take any extra effort to ensure the disks get recycled.