Modern society is underpinned by daily gas-emitting activities such as food production, maintaining infrastructure, using transportation, and energy consumption. Consequently, the world continues to warm, as evidenced by a new global carbon footprint record from fossil fuel greenhouse emissions getting set in 2023.
There is no clear or easy path forward to address this climate crisis. But it will require everyone to play their part, starting with understanding the issue and how our activities play a role as we move towards larger societal solutions.
For our industry that means quantifying the vinyl record industry’s contribution to the climate emergency. Among the key questions we need to answer include:
What are the most important steps we should take to make manufacturing and distributing records as sustainable as possible?
However, data appears to be in short supply. In an effort to start addressing this gap in knowledge and come up with solutions, the Vinyl Record Manufacturers’ Association and the Vinyl Alliance established a transatlantic Carbon Footprint Working Group to provide some much-needed answers.
Our objective is to understand the carbon footprint of vinyl record production across different supply chains, and present the first rigorous analysis of the footprint of a vinyl record from “cradle to factory gate.”
This will show the relative contributions of lacquer manufacture, lacquer cutting, galvanics and pressing, as well as that from sleeves and jackets.
We can identify the most important steps to take to reduce the carbon footprint of a vinyl record and also identify things that are not significant.
At this stage, our initial data is based on a very limited number of businesses in the supply chain. So we invite other industry companies to share what they know about their own carbon footprints.
If you are a pressing plant, the workgroup will offer guidance to know which areas to focus on to reduce your emissions as effectively as possible and to start a program. If you are a manufacturer that outsources your production, you now can ask your suppliers how they’re addressing these issues.
As we start to better understand what emissions impact manufacturing records our industry can be empowered to talk more confidently about the steps we’re taking to push toward a more sustainable way forward. The faster we build a deep bank of auditable and transparent data about the environmental footprint of vinyl records, the quicker our industry can do its part in fixing this global crisis and for the first time start explaining how the impact of buying a record compares to streaming.
A sustainable physical product that allows fans to better connect with favorite artists can be a powerful offering. This working group aims to provide a starting point towards that journey together.
We’re here to help. Email your data and/or questions to the workgroup chair: [email protected].
