The Bright Side of Vinyl

Hi everyone!

In my last 2 posts, we looked at the dark side of vinyl and the many negative environmental impacts that it possesses. But maybe the production of records isn’t as bad as we think? In this day and age, more and more people and companies are taking notice of how their actions impact the environment, and those in the record industry are of no exception.

Green Vinyl Records

Injection Moulding Machine

One group of companies in particular seems to have it all figured out. Green Vinyl Records project is a collaboration between 8 Dutch companies who have developed a more environmentally friendly alternative production process for vinyl. Their goal is “to reduce the amount of energy and waste within the vinyl record manufacturing process” and they have done this by replacing the plastics of which the records are made of with eco-friendly materials and also by using a new injection molding technique to produce their records.

Syncom’s Harm Theunisse explained to Discogs “With this method, the plastic is injected straight into the grooves, which copies the grooves on the stamper better than the conventional method, in which the vinyl is being pushed onto the grooves at an angle”. This method of injection moulding uses 65% less energy than the traditional steam press method and thus results in less pollution to environment through CO2 emissions.

In this video, Harm Theunisse explains the injection moulding processes in detail:

HD Vinyl

HD Vinyl is another company that is trying a different approach to producing records. Instead of using the conventional steam press method, they are using a lazer-cut stamper which is able to produce up to 10000 vinyl records with copy being of the same high quality due to the absence of stamper-wear.

This method of producing records removes the chemical component from the manufacturing process and the company explains that “The result is a stamper that is cleaner to produce, has a far longer lifespan, and leaves a far smaller environmental footprint,”.

What else can be done?

Even for companies who are still using the traditional steam press method of producing vinyl, there are still ways for them to make the process more environmentally friendly. For example, some companies would meltdown and reuse the backstock of vinyl that they have not used to make new pressings, so as to reduce the waste and try and extend the lifespan of the record.

Additionally, from the standpoint of a record collector such as myself, instead of buying the repressing of old albums, we should instead buy second hand versions of those albums that have already been pressed. By doing so we would be extending the lifespan of the record and keeping these old records out of being incinerated in landfills for a longer period of time.

That’s it for todays post! I hope this post gives you some hope for the vinyl community in becoming more environmentally friendly. I will wrap up on this topic of Vinyl Records in the next couple of posts and will soon be moving on to Digital Music!

References:

The Green Vinyl Records project. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2020, from https://greenvinylrecords.com/index.php/het-project-en-us/

SoLil. (2016, November 03). Injection Moulded Records – Vinyl Of The Future?: Discogs. Retrieved September 11, 2020, from https://blog.discogs.com/en/injection-moulded-records-vinyl-of-the-future/?utm_source=social

No more toxic chemicals. No more stamper wear. No more copying. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2020, from https://hdvinyl.org/hd-vinyl-benefits/

Spice, A. (2018, April 20). The rest is surface noise: What is HD Vinyl and is it really a good idea? Retrieved September 11, 2020, from https://thevinylfactory.com/features/hd-vinyl-interview/

Wilson, J. (2019, March 14). Dark side of the vinyl: Are records bad for the environment? Retrieved September 11, 2020, from https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/03/dark-side-of-the-vinyl-are-records-bad-for-the-environment/

Opinion: How sustainable are new trends toward vinyl collecting? (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2020, from https://studentnewspaper.org/article/opinion-how-sustainable-are-new-trends-toward-vinyl-collecting