Vinyl goes green!

My Anniversary pressing of "The Best of the Doobie Brothers"  is a Mountain Dew green..... 

@mulveling Insert enough trendy buzzwords into any marketing language and watch the consumers’ Agreeability Sensors blink and glow like a Christmas tree.

”Ooooo, did you hear that, honey? They said, ‘sustainable!’”

So ‘going green’ has resulted in cars run on lithium ion batteries- a dangerous and toxic production method that can’t be recycled - hydrogen fuel cells haven’t been supported. We have the annoying thunberg whose message goes out on mobile phones and various media devices. We live in times of appalling food wastage and appalling failure to recycle and attention turns to vinyl record production that rarely needs to be recycled in a time we have better HD streaming than ever - genius 

It’s hard to imagine any consumer product with as long a useful life as traditional vinyl records. This is yet another questionable gimmick pandering to current trends of "going green" - don’t think anything through; just go with what sounds nice under the banner of "go green". I’d say go after the DISPOSABLE aspects of consumerism, not this. Rest assured sound quality and durability are NOT the #1 priority in this new formula.

I’ll go out of my way to avoid these pressings, just as I avoid "alternative" meat products.

@heretobuy had it right. Vinyl LPs are mostly recycled vinyl today. I have no use for any "biodegradable" albums.  I intentionally want my albums to last 100 years or more.  I hope there's a chance my relatives will be playing them well into the future, even if just for the fun and amusing aspect of it. 

Vinyl can be recycled and if not used for more albums there are lots of other uses for it such as filler for asphalt in roads.

All these "green solutions" seem to be more "problems looking for a solution (or a government grant)" than anything concrete to actually help the environment or the human condition. 

Yes, too many plastics over the last 80 years have bad environmental issues and effects on biology, but we must note that just like what was said in the movie The Graduate, there are thousands upon thousands of "plastics" that were developed (and still being developed).  

The vinyl used in LPs is not the main culprit in causing harm.

More power to the company trying this, but I'm not sure a market will exist or be accepting of this product. 

@ozzy62 He's not wrong. Kilgore Trout and his plastic-coated feet for-told this.

Wake Up - There is Concern

Wake Up - This is a Human Engineered Threat to the Planets Life Support 

Wake Up - There are better choices.

Oh brother......🙄

@pindac +1! I'm doing my part by keeping excellent old turntables safe from the landfill - including four Empires and two Duals! 

If proper waste control measures were put in place at the Peak Period of production with Plastics, which most likely 50 to 60 years past, the cost of Plastic at the retail end, items offered will most likely have been comparable to a product produced from a Metal.

With nearly a Hundred Years of using Plastics, of which 80ish years, the usage being mainstream, and only a small proportion of this period is discovered as having a improved set of measures for waste management.

There is substantial exposure to this waste both airborne and waterborne.

There is not much that is to be for supporting life, that is not contaminated with it.

The Harm done as a result, to all life is becoming known, and the early findings are not too pleasant a read.

Plastic is a Human Condition and is one more that every Human has a duty of care, to find a way to undo the mess.  

Most Items owned, that are produced from a plastic based material, are a luxury item, bought as a cheap alternative, which are in most cases seen as being disposable without concern. 

Wake Up - There is Concern

Wake Up - This is a Human Engineered Threat to the Planets Life Support 

Wake Up - There are better choices

As for Vinyl or a Vinyl Alternative, most users are collectors, not discarders, they don't make the originals anymore, which leaves earlier produced material an item of interest to be purchased and kept in use.

Vinyl has an extremely long user life, and is an exception to the norm.

A Vinyl Replay Ancillaries can also be quite Green, a Tonearm and Cartridge are Passive, a Tonearm can last a Lifetime and a Cart' can offer a Long usage if serviced when coming to the end of usage life.

A Phonostage can be a Battery Powered Device, and I am sure there are TT's to be found that can be run from Battery Power.

It is also quite interesting, the amount of individuals that take on Pre-Owned TT's across all era's of production and do not aspire to a Modern Day Production TT. This is almost similar to the attitude to the Vinyl LP. 

In general across the board, by avoiding modern production, is reducing the mass energies used, mass use of water, and mass waste that is to be released. 

When thought about the whole, the impact of waste looks beyond coming into a control where change will be seen in a lifetime.

As it does seem, it is waste that is the main culprit, a individual that adopts new ways that are mindful toward reducing waste and is selective in choosing their activities to be undertaken, that are not readily generating waste that can't be successfully managed, is making a turn for the better.

I think vinyl has been green for the last 35 years because 80% of the LPs you buy are recycled.

+1 @kingharold

@yogiboy 

Thanks for sharing.  I wish them all the best, but as we all know, they have a long way to go before that have a shelf stable product that will sound as good as vinyl and last as long as vinyl.

Some companies tried greener car wiring.  Mice found it delicious.

Back when I was in vinyl mastering ( 20 years ago ) I had some one off test records a guy in Germany pressed from a hemp plastic. So this conversation is not new. Longevity, sq, and interest are all pretty unknown. Cool ideas anyway...

And so it goes. We stop pipelines and domestic drilling only to truck oil from Canada or ship it across the pond on a tanker. So in the name of being “greener”, we are anything but.

According to the video the new formulation has SQ that is "just about high as vinyl, maybe 95%."

That is not good enough for me.

Biological products have a serious habit of degrading over time. It is highly unlikely that they will be able to match the long term durability of PVC even if they can match the sound quality. Getting the industry to switch from something they are so comfortable with would also be a problem. Records, even in their hay day were not near the largest use of PVC. Now they might represent less than 1%. Think plumbing. If you want to make a real contribution to the planet's health think Molten Sodium Nuclear Reactors. 

interesting, thanks for posting, time will tell.

'cost more'?

anything that costs more negates it's advantage if people have to work extra time to make the extra money, burning lights, running ac, ...... it takes a long time to balance these factors