It takes only about 5-10 seconds to make a store bought CD

You listen to them on your stereo, play them in your computer, or watch movies on them. Compact discs (CDs) and their faster cousin, video discs (DVDs), are everywhere. Only a few millimeters thick, they provide hours of entertainment and hold huge volumes of information. But do you ever stop to think about how CDs and DVDs are made, what materials are used, or what happens to these discs
when you don't want them anymore?

Making products like CDs and DVDs consumes natural resources, produces waste, and uses energy. CDs and DVDs are created from many different materials, including metals, plastics, and dyes. The discs are packaged in clear or colored plastic cases or cardboard boxes, wrapped in plastic, and sent to distribution centers and retail outlets around the world. If properly stored and handled, most CDs and DVDs will last for decades, and probably centuries. Depending on their condition, unwanted discs can be reused or recycled instead of thrown away, saving energy and valuable resources.

The entire process of encoding music onto a CD takes only about 5-10 seconds. A high-pressure stamper embeds the digital information into tiny indentations on a polycarbonate plastic blank, which is later coated with metal.

In 2000, more than 700 compact disc factories were operating worldwide.

When CDs were first introduced in the United States in 1983, 800,000 discs were sold. By 1990, this number had grown to close to 1 billion.

Between 1983 and 1996, the average price of a music CD in the U.S. fell by more than 40 percent.

The European market for music CDs is expanding rapidly, with almost 2.9 billion compact discs produced in Western Europe in 1998.

Each month, more than 45 tons of CDs become obsolete—outdated, useless, or unwanted.

Each year, more than 55 million boxes of software go to landfills and incinerators, and people throw away millions of music CDs.