Yeah, I didn't do a very catchy title. Sorry about that. It's like this. Come the 29th of September, Netflix will send out the last of their DVDs. I know this doesn't matter to alot of people, or they would have tried to save this. But consider this: that's a rather huge dump in landfills. And we do similar ones every timevwe switch from VHS to DVD to BluRay to whatever else. Whenever a video game console stops selling? Enormous piles in the landfill. You say you guys care about the environment? Think of all of the waste involved here. And it's not just trash waste. I grew up with classic video games. Especially roleplaying games. What would it be like if you couldn't play Crystalis? Or Tetris? The original Legend of Zelda. Or games with really good stories, like Lunar. The same goes for movies and shows. I want to see the Korean drama Sorry, I Love You? Legend of Condor Hero? Joh Kirby: Time Warrior! ? Sorry, once the copyright is still up but the movie, show or film is gone, it's stuck in a sort of legal limbo. This means everyone who could help to preserve it is told no. Back to Netflix. They can't even sell their movies, because of licensing. Collectors would gladly buy many of these. Instead, they might offer 10 extra movies to certain customers, which is a drop in the bucket.

So what's at stake you ask? (Didn't really do the first paragraph right...) Only the preservation of history and the environment. without dedicated systems to digitize media, all of this waste is for nothing. Tech waste quickly becomes toxic waste in a landfill, and while many of these things are difficult to recycle, perhaps that exactly the point. Unsold DVD-r discs just sit at wholesale systems. It's not like we need to make more. Rather we ought to use these extras to archive old media, so that the next generation had access to these. Bring back DVDs for video archives, game archives, and even old book archives. Make all laptops have DVD (and BluRay) support. We're entering a period where there is gonna be no hard copy of history. BluRay was too fast for people to accept it, so mainly streaming sites have taken over. As you've noticed, due to licensing nonense, places like Netflix don't even have all the movies on streaming. This means once streaming decides Casablanca is too old, you'll never get to watch it again! So lemme see if I can organize what I want done. Sorry, ADHD.

1. Get proper licensing exceptions for abandonware (precisely the sort Netflix now faces) so that companies can legally archive films that no longer sell in stores. Which means none of this "discontinued because Netflix no longer has the rights." Unless someone ( ahem, Disney) decides to enforce copyright, the average ten year old film should be a simple abandonware contract. Netflix buys the film ONCE and pays no subscription, allowing all of these older movies to be added to their streaming before getting tossed in the dumpster.
2.  Don't toss them into the dumpster! At least not all at once. Make rules governing the mass disposal of media. Donate to libraries, tech preservation services (in some cases, this means turning video games into emulation stuff), secondhand dealers, and then donating them to thrift stores. The dumpster ought to be the very last place they end up.
3. Better recycling that includes tech products. We want to minimize toxic waste, and at the same time offer jobs to people learning how to properly dispose of cartridges, electronic devices, batteries, etc. This is already happening with solar cells that are no longer useful. Cadmium runoff is a thing. 
4. Allowing private individuals to use old media (unedited). This goes into abandonware laws. If you aren't selling it anymore, at the very least, someone should be able to buy it one-time if not just use for free. 

Why is there a rush? Well, come September 29, there's gonna be a pretty big landfill pile if nothing is done. And if the EV car industry behaves the same way, can you imagine? Giant batteries leaching who knows what into our oceans. We need better disposal of tech, and better management of history. I want people in 3500 AD to say, "Yeah, Casablanca was a good movie" not, "Those people from the 20th century didn't leave anything behind except these composted bits of plastic discs in large piles. What were they for? "