Industry and musicians explore ways to make vinyl records more environmentally friendly

Australian musician Stella Donnelly took about three years to write her latest album, Love and Fortune. Every detail was carefully considered.

"I kind of treated it like I was writing a book," Donnelly tells triple j hack.

"It traces the path of a friendship break-up, really, and trying to make a road map back to myself after that happening in my life."

In the album, Donnelly navigates this messiness with precision — an approach she is also extending to the physical record itself.

Inside the sleeve, the record is made from a sustainable option called "regrind vinyl", in a bid to minimise the impact on the environment.

"I just asked the question — it was very simple," she says. "'What have you got in terms of saving on materials?'"

"And they were like, 'We can do the regrind for no extra cost.'"

What is regrind vinyl?

Love and Fortune is made from regrind vinyl, essentially factory offcuts from the pressing plant floor and other unused vinyl, melted back down to make a new record.

"All those bits that are going to go in the bin — they've ended up on my record," Donnelly tells Hack.

"At the time I was in there, they were pressing the Big Thief record. So, I'm hoping some of their talent has rubbed off on me somehow on my album."

The record is available in a "lucky dip" selection of coloured marble vinyl.

It was pressed at Program Records in Thornbury, in Melbourne's north-east — one of just three vinyl manufacturers in Australia.

"I've been conscious of the environmental impact of what we do," owner Steve Lynch tells Hack.

"As time goes on and I think the community demands more, then the solutions become easier."

Program Records presses for local and international artists; the first regrind record it put out was for Australian psych-rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

"We had kept the plastic from the first job we did for them, which was Butterfly 3000," Lynch says.

The band's 2022 record Omnium Gatherum was the factory's next job.

Like Stella Donnelly's "lucky dip" option, King Gizzard's regrind came in blue, yellow and red butterfly variants.

"It was the real plastic, so we didn't fudge it," Lynch says. "And then [we] started offering it as a product."

The vinyl revival

Nostalgia for analogue formats is driving people towards vinyl.

And as some users continue to step away from some of the major streaming platforms like Spotify, fans are looking for other ways to support their favourite artists.

Buying physical music, like vinyl, CDs and cassettes, generates significantly more income for musicians than streaming royalties, although it does have an impact on the environment — something that particularly concerns national music and climate non-profit organisation Green Music Australia.

"Most of the emissions impacts of a vinyl record is coming from the fact that it's made overseas," says Berish Bilander, Green Music Australia's chief executive.

"And it's being shipped over here by aeroplane. Three hundred per cent more emissions [are] coming from that."

Green Music Australia estimates about 80 per cent of the records sold here are pressed in either Europe or North America.

Vinyl = plastic

Regrind aside, most vinyl records are made from PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, a plastic polymer.

Dr Kyle Devine, from the University of Winnipeg in Canada, says that has not really changed since the technology came in.

"From about 1950 to the year 2000, all the major recording formats — so LPs, 45s, cassettes and CDs — they're all made out of different kinds of plastic, but they are all essentially plastic," he says.

Dr Devine is the author of Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music.

"Early on in writing that book, I definitely found that the same people I knew who were most likely to buy organic groceries and want to drive electric cars … were also the same people who really were heavily invested in vinyl records," he says.

"Which are these products of the fossil fuel … and the plastics industries.

"It's an old philosophical idea that music is the most immaterial of the arts, because it's a form of human expression that unfolds in time.

"It was definitely material and it had an environmental impact."

So, is streaming music better for the planet?

"For me, to stream an album versus buying an album, there's really no comparison," Dr Devine says.

"One-to-one, streaming an album is vastly more energy-efficient.

"There was some research … suggesting if you were going to listen to an album more than 27 times, you were better off buying that album as a CD than you were continuously streaming it."

But he believes those direct comparisons miss the point: the figures constantly change and the energy that supports streaming is always on.

"The internet, the streaming infrastructure, the digital service providers — they never stand still.

"Streaming is way more efficient, but the amount of streaming that's going on sort of outruns its own efficiency."

The 'petrocapitalist' side of making vinyl records

Manufacturing records is fossil fuel-intensive and the industry is geographically and commercially concentrated.

"There are a few places in the world, including the US and the Czech Republic … that have mega-factories," Berish Bilander says.

"Factories that can produce millions of units, and they service some of the biggest acts in the world.

"And because they're doing such high numbers, they can get the cost-per-unit down to a point where it's really affordable."

That affordability can create a problem of its own, he cautions: an oversupply of records, which can ultimately become dead stock.

"It's sort of a dirty secret of the industry — you wouldn't hear about it because no one would want to talk about units that haven't sold," Bilander says.

With major artists like Taylor Swift releasing dozens of vinyl variants for recent albums, there's concern this practice incentivises excess consumption.

"You can tell when an artist's team have gone, 'How can we extract the most money possible from our fan base?'" Bilander says.

"I think it's a terrible look and it's awful for the environment. We've already got consumption problems. We don't need 40 versions of one album."

Greener options on the horizon

While regrind vinyl stands out as one easy alternative, there are others emerging.

Records made from bio-vinyl, or bio-attributed vinyl, are already in production overseas, manufactured from used cooking oil instead of fossil fuels.

American artist Billie Eilish released bio-vinyl variants for her 2024 album Hit Me Hard and Soft, and it's a product Steve Lynch is experimenting with in Melbourne.

Program Records has imported bio-vinyl resin — using it to re-press Australian garage-rock band Eddy Current Suppression Ring's first three albums to make a "locally made, lower carbon compound" record, Lynch says.

The Thornbury factory also recycles dead stock on site.

"We have taken records back — some made by us, some not made by us, some of which we processed back into our regrind," Lynch says.

On top of that, technology is being developed to make records out of PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, the plastic used for water bottles.

In the UK, Evolution Music — which is being advised by Dr Kyle Devine — is trialling making records out of sugar.

But with air freight being the biggest polluter in the supply chain, Berish Bilander says getting records locally pressed in the places they are being sold will make the biggest difference.

"Because then you're limiting those miles of travel," he says.

Community and artists demand to make things greener

As a touring musician, Stella Donnelly has felt the tension of wanting to be a successful artist while minimising her impact on the planet.

"I want to only do better," she says.

"This is just kind of the start for me in trying to implement more environmental shifts in my practices."

Bilander eventually wants to see a world where vinyl records could be fully recycled into another product.

"This is part of the innovation that we're really excited to see," he says.

"Where dead stock vinyl can be turned into new vinyl records or at least something useful, like a park bench."

"Our culture needs to evolve past one of consumption," Berish Bilander says.

"And Australia's just really well placed to be leading that shift."

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