That familiar, warm sound of the crackle & pop coming off of a turntable … is there anything more nostalgic?
For the past 15 years, vinyl records have become increasingly popular among both older and younger generations. In 2020, vinyl surpassed CD sales for the first time since the 1980s.
For some, this love of vinyl never left.
“I spent so much time with my dad listening to records,” local Athens DJ Mark Weathersby recalled. “I really hold [vinyl] near and dear to my heart. I got my first record in 1981, and I’m still collecting today.”
Whether it’s nostalgia, favorable audio quality, or having a keepsake of your favorite artist’s album, this nearly long-forgotten format is now reviving vinyl pressing plants.
But at what cost for the environment?
Why It’s Newsworthy: Pressing plants like Athens’ own Classic City Vinyl Works are contributing to the availability and access to vinyl records, making a growing trend a mainstay in the music industry.
Currently, pressing plants use the same process as plants in the 60s, and while it may be efficient, it can put more plastic into our landfills.
Sustainable Practices Pressing Plants Could Implement
“When we first started Kindercore Vinyl in 2015, we had no idea how popular vinyl was going to become,” Former Chief Operating Officer Cash Carter said. “It took us two years to press our first record. At that time, if you had told me that not just Walmart and Target, but Cracker Barrel was selling records, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
Kindercore Vinyl, now known as Classic City Vinyl Works, is Athens’ very own pressing plant. Cash Carter left the company in 2022, but is still continuing to work with multiple pressing plants around the country to implement greener practices.
There are a few sustainable practices pressing plants could put into action, and for Carter, it all started with valuing KinderCore’s employees.
“If a company does not adequately pay their staff, the quality control will decrease. That’ll lead to more pressings being rejected, and potentially more waste. Treating your staff fairly will reduce a lot of unnecessary pollution,” he said.
While at KinderCore, Carter also recycled excess trimmings from a “biscuit” after being stamped. This regrind would be offered to customers at a discounted rate, and it would reduce the amount of plastic put in landfills.
“We invested a large amount of money in dinkers, which allowed us to recycle most rejected test pressings,” Carter said, “That also limited the amount of PVC we had to use.”
PVC, which stands for polyvinyl chloride, is a type of thermoplastic polymer that is widely used for products like water pipes, shoes, flooring, packaging, water bottles and much more.
Presses are typically run four to five times, and those first few records are sent to record labels as test pressings for approval. If there is a major discrepancy in audio quality, the pressing plant must find the root of the problem. Sometimes this means cleaning the stampers, other times it means scrapping the stampers and cutting a new lacquer.
Carter’s implementation of dinkers, which are machines that cut out the center labels of rejected records, allow the PVC to be melted and ground again for future use.
“Unfortunately, most record labels want ‘virgin’ vinyl,” he continued. “This is PVC that hasn’t been used. There’s a myth in the record business that ‘virgin’ vinyl sounds better than regrind. We really need to educate consumers that this is false, and labels need to change their marketing.”
Enforcing Sustainability in Pressing Plants
As for enforceable sustainability measures on pressing plants? There are none, besides the standard codes all manufacturers must abide by. Like most businesses, recycling is optional. Though most plants offer discounted regrind, there aren’t any policies that lessen the amount of PVC thrown away.
“Nobody ever came to our plant to check and see our sustainability practices,” former United Record Pressing project manager Jessica Baird recalled. “I’d always offer discounted regrind to artists or labels on a budget. Usually, the price alone would sell it, but the added benefit was helping the environment.”
The number of records produced per order pressing plants offer to buyers could reduce the amount of vinyl that ends up in the landfill. “If artists were given the option to buy 50 or 100 records instead of 500 or 1,000, they would be able to sell those without 400 unwanted records sitting in their basement,” Carter said.
“While that may help artists, it puts pressing plants at a disadvantage,” Baird explained. “It doesn’t matter how short of a run a pressing plant produces, the process and cost of getting a lacquer cut and stampers made is the same. Most of this cost is put on the pressing plant, so it’s difficult to find a plant that does short runs of 50 or 100 records.”
Still, there are pressing plants like Mobineko in Taiwan and DeepGrooves in the Netherlands, that do offer short runs. “I’d rather send artists I know to a plant here in the US or Canada to reduce the amount of fuel and money spent on orders overseas,” Carter said, “It’s thinking more about solving the problem in a way that makes everybody happy. We can talk about a local band discarding 400 unsold units sitting in their house. Or we can go to the pressing plants and make it beneficial for both of them. We need to make it affordable.”
Is Streaming Music Better Than Producing Vinyl?
For those who aren’t collectors or the occasional buyer, streaming music from a mobile device seems to be the more environmentally conscious choice.
Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple.
All digital service providers like Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal, rely on servers powered by electricity that is most often generated by fossil fuels. Although Amazon Music and Apple Music power 65% of their operations with renewable energy, carbon emissions from streaming services are still soaring.
Greenhouse gasses from streaming, storing and transmitting media are estimated to be between 200 million kilograms and over 350 million kilograms in the U.S. alone. When compared to the 157 million kilograms of greenhouse gasses produced from all physical media in 2000, streaming is quite harmful to the environment.
“If you throw [LPs] away, it’s bad. But most people don’t.” Carter explained, “Once you capture that carbon, it’s captured. It’s not like it keeps sending problems out into the environment.” Still, LPs can leave a carbon footprint that’s equivalent to that of nearly 400 people per year, according to a Keele University study.
That doesn’t account for the packaging and transport of the records. Production alone produces 1.9 thousand tons of carbon dioxide per every 4.1 million records made. As Carter suggests, once the record is pressed, playing it does not emit more carbon into the atmosphere.
For most, vinyl is not a single-use plastic.
“People like to keep a record collection,” Baird said. “It’s almost like a keepsake. Many people hold onto their collection for their whole life.”
As a consumer, there are ways to recycle vinyl through recycling specialists like Recovinyl, who work to lessen the amount of LPs that end up in landfills.
“I am such a lover of music,” Weathersby said. “Whatever’s available to me, I will grab it. I love having the music, and if there was a more eco-friendly option available, especially when it comes to packaging or pressings, that definitely would influence my purchasing decisions.”
Zoe Willard is a senior majoring in journalism.
NOTE: Jessica Baird is not speaking on behalf of United Record Pressing (URP). As a former employee, Baird worked at URP for four years. She expresses her own opinions and thoughts as reflected in this article.
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