Buying vs borrowing

I love it when saving money also helps the environment. I love watching DVDs, but have never been big on driving to the store to rent them from local shops (except when I lived in DC and the store was in walking distance). So, I loved when I read the other day that ordering things through the mail was more energy efficient than driving to get them if you had to drive more than four miles.

Plus, if you rent instead of buying, you save money and reduce the overall environmental impact of production. The more people who use an item, the more you distribute the cost of production. So now I feel both frugal and eco-friendly when I get my DVD fix from Netflix or through home delivery from the library (the library has a great documentary catalog).