Living in a time when environmental consciousness has become hip, many wonder why it has taken the music industry so long to turn on.

Active artists, including U2, Sting and Peter Gabriel, have been pushing to eliminate the compact disc longboxes, which -- at 12 inches long and about half an inch wide --produce more than 20 million pounds of garbage a year, according to the Associated Press.

This push was not immediately welcomed by retailers, who worried that less packaging would make discs easier to steal and were equally concerned about increased costs for new display racks and security devices.

Tim Sites, vice president of communications for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), admits it has taken the music industry quite some time to react to the idea of saving trees. He said the reason is simple.

"It is a large industry to gain consensus from," he said.

The RIAA, a trade association working for all the record companies as a whole, announced last February an industry agreement to drop the longboxes. Since then, most retailers have been preparing themselves. As of last week, no more longboxes were to be shipped.

"It was a voluntary decision that the industry adopted towards a cleaner and healthier environment," Sites said, adding that he hoped other industries would follow suit.

Marsha Green, manager of Wall to Wall Sound and Video in The Nittany Mall, said she has been waiting for the change. Although her store is prepared, so far they've only been getting in a few discs without the boxes.

Jay Williams, an employee at Blue Train Compact Discs, 418 E. College Ave., said the store also has been ready. The only problem he sees concerns aesthetics; the plastic keepers that the discs will be locked in are plain and one-dimensional.

"They're going to be ugly looking," he said.

Ken Kubala, manager of Modern Times Compact Discs, 318 E. College Ave., said he has always thought the boxes were useless, but he thinks people are making too big a deal out of the change.

"There's plenty of waste in the record industry besides the longbox," he said.

Steve Geppert (sophomore-mechanical engineering) has been wall-papering some of his dorm room with disc longboxes, but is happy they are finally being done away with.

"I basically hang them up because it seems a waste to throw them away," he said.

Consumers will have to be patient with retailers during the transition and be willing to adjust to new marketing. But there won't be any immediate compensation for this patience.

Money saved won't stay in the buyer's pocket. It will be passed on to the retailer to help pay for redesigning stores to fit the new display styles and electronic anti-theft labels, Sites said.