Environmental Vinyl

In 2007, artist Katie Paterson cut the sound of three Icelandic glaciers onto three records made from frozen meltwater. Played simultaneously on three turntables, they took just one hour and 57 minutes to melt completely. This was the same year that vinyl sales began to climb once more, reaching five million albums in the UK and almost 42 million in the USA in 2021. The message that we are living in a climate emergency doesn’t need spelling out, but as far as records are concerned, perhaps the medium does.

It's no secret that records are made from polyvinyl chloride under intense heat, wrapped in card and plastic, and flown around the world. And yet, for most record buyers, the origins of their ingredients are opaque, the labour involved often obscured, and their disposal largely ignored. Just as figures about melting ice caps can feel detached from their effects, so do sales statistics abstract the industrial processes that drive them. There are few industries on Earth where the year-on-year increase in the production of petrochemical-derived PVC is celebrated as it is in music.

Clearly, this is a complicated issue. How do you talk about music’s relationship with the climate crisis and resource extraction without also removing some of its joy? In his book ‘Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music’, Kyle Devine calls this a form of “musical exceptionalism” – the idea artistic expression should somehow be exempt from scrutiny. As a former editor of a music magazine, I saw how the rhetoric of the vinyl revival imbued records with a form of sacred purpose, a tangible manifestation of culture and meaning. Questions of environmental impact registered as little more than surface noise.

For Adam Callan of Earth/Percent, an environmental fundraising charity co-founded with Brian Eno, these questions are long overdue. “The whole industry is going through a reckoning

Images courtesy of Earth/Percent, Key Production.

of finding itself as quite a dinosaur in a modern age,” he says. It's an unusual position for a scene that likes to style itself as progressive. Founder and CEO of music manufacturers Key Production and long-time sustainability advocate Karen Emanuel agrees: “Go back 20 years and no-one was even thinking about these things.” This is beginning to change. Buoyed by the concerted efforts of both manufacturers and consumers to improve practices, Key Production now actively encourages pressing on 140g rather than 180g vinyl and offers a range of choices to its customers, from “eco-mix” re-used PVC pellets to recyclable card. But Emanuel is under no illusions about the compromises at play. “Scratch the surface and there are two sides to everything,” she says, pointing to shrink wrap – often touted as a simple measure to cut plastic waste – as having big implications for the number of damaged records that will end up in landfill. Without the systems and infrastructures to make them workable, the success of vinyl recycling processes will be as mixed as the quality of the pellets.

Rather than mitigate the impact of PVC-derived vinyl, an organisation called Evolution Music is taking steps towards replacing it altogether. Earlier this year, they collaborated with Earth/Percent to release the first commercially available bioplastic 12-inch, featuring new music from Michael Stipe and Beatie Woolf, with the aim of both raising awareness and championing a potential alternative to polyvinyl chloride.

Described by co-founder and CEO Marc Carey as a “recipe”, the bioplastic compound (PLA) is derived from plant sugars and mixed with an organic filler and masterbatch to make it both durable and, ultimately, biodegradable. Rather than require wholesale changes to pressing infrastructure, the bioplastic pellets can be poured straight into (some) existing machines. With a per/record carbon footprint roughly a fifth of traditional vinyl, Carey says it even requires slightly lower temperatures to press, which he estimates could save pressing plants 10-15% on their energy bills.

“Why would you carry on using a product that comes from the petrochemical industry?” he asks.

Of course, even a bioplastic record has two sides. Where the feedstock crop is grown and how much land it uses need to be transparent. PLA is not as immediately recyclable as PVC and

requires specialised conditions to biodegrade. In landfill it can take hundreds of years to decompose.

And how do they actually sound? “This last pressing that we did was 95% of the way there,” Carey says, with plans to reach what he calls the “holy grail” within months. Carey is bullish about its prospect. At a recent trip to manufacturing event Making Vinyl, he came face to face with the PVC pellet industry. “One of them shook my hand and said: ‘We're the people that make real vinyl’.” Carey pauses. “OK, good luck to you mate.” It’s an interesting question. Is it really the PVC that makes records special?

While vinyl attracts most attention, both Carey and Callan agree that a reckoning with streaming is also not far away. Data collected by Devine suggests that greenhouse gas emissions from recorded music are now significantly higher than they were in the plastics era. Even the most excessive estimates suggest that vinyl records now account for less than 0.1% of global PVC usage. Streams, however intangible, exert their own pressure on the planet, as do the largely disposable, lithium-powered devices from which they are accessed. “It's something we'll have to grapple with,” Callan adds. “It's all the more reason that the industry should get ahead of this so that if people do ask: ‘Is this OK?' there is a coherent answer.”

There is no single answer. Instead, there are options. Key Production offers eco-friendly alternatives and carbon balancing. Earth/Percent advocates for a 1% donation from artists towards environmental causes. Evolution Music’s bioplastic compound will be an option at some major pressing plants by early 2023. Nonprofits like Julie’s Bicycle are mobilising environment awareness in the creative sector and Music Declares Emergency has become the voice of a movement pressing for change.

“I think we will see a point where everyone is engaging with one of these organisations as per what is appropriate for their business,” Callan says.

Crucially, none of these organisations are interested in making people feel guilty about buying records. Instead, they are focussed on changing systems and offering solutions so better decisions can be made about how music is produced and consumed. Decisions where its extractive and polluting elements are not swept under the carpet but acknowledged and challenged, and the sense of shared purpose that makes music such a galvanising art form can play out in more intentional ways.

“It goes further than using the right card,” Emanuel says. “It's the way you treat your staff. It’s what you do for your community. It’s best practice in every way you can.” ANTON SPICE28_DISCO_POGO