No need for physical media when it comes to file sharing. But if you really hate the environment so much, I guess yeah... sure, physical media accomplishes something.
I haven't deleted any downloaded content in about 17 years now.
That's redefining what physical media is. It's used to contrast digital media, like hard drives.
These headlines want you to buy dvds/blurays. Which they specifically tell you to do at the end of the article.
But yes, you are correct. I still feel it's important to remind people that the only alternative to streaming isn't like DVDs or vinyl records or something.
To be frank, any mention of "physical media" almost exclusively means DVDs/blu-rays/etc. But people really should talk more about hard drives as physical storage. It's essentially the same concept as those mediums anyhow. The only physical difference is storage size and the practical differences (no ads, locked content, quality limits, etc) are huge.
Why the hate on your post. Physical media has its downsides as well, like polution you mentioned but others such as degradation over time, region locking, especially optical disks. There isn't a best solution since I believe the preservation of media should be a mixture, I like having physical copies of my favourite media and then soft copies of the rest