An Internal Circular Economy in Vinyl Manufacturing
In their series Before The Needle, The Vinyl Factory is debuting its new Eco-Jazz material. This material utilizes leftover PVC from previous vinyl pressings, creating a circular economy around this plastic.
The process, which involves recycling PVC from the coloured waste of records previously manufactured in-house, sees increased sustainability as well as creating one-of-a-kind records due to the “lucky dip” nature of blending granulated colour trimmings (The Vinyl Factory, 2023).
While vinyl records are far from single use, they are still a plastic product and attention towards their life cycle is necessary. Eco-Jazz and similar initiatives are a step in the right direction to a more circular vinyl production process (The Vinyl Factory, 2023).
All the excess PVC trimmed off of our colour records is collected and granulated into small pellets. These colour pellets are all mixed up with the colours we are currently pressing at the time. We then put this mix of colour pellets back into our legendary EMI 1400 presses that use a Werner & Pfleiderer double-screw extruder. This blends the pellets and allows us to press records with a unique blend of colours (The Vinyl Factory, 2023).
For a long time now we have been granulating our waste colour PVC and shipping it out to a licenced recycling specialist who has then been turning it into pipes, windows, playgrounds, etc. We always knew we could potentially put our colour waste back into the process, but there was never the demand (The Vinyl Factory, 2023).
We understand there are limitations to the sustainability of our Eco-Jazz alternative–it is not the complete cure for the industry, but a tangible and immediate alternative on offer right now. As an industry, we are working with our neighbours up and down the value chain to make a more sustainable future for us all, but Eco-Jazz is a first step (The Vinyl Factory, 2023).
Eco-Jazz is a fantastic example of a material that comes from an internal waste stream, being the vinyl industry. As the Vinyl Factory states, they have long been working with external plastic manufacturers to create pipes, molded objects, and other PVC items out of the pelletized offcuts. This shift to an internal circular economy may not be exclusive, but perhaps just adding an additional outlet to ensure that this plastic doesn't end up in the landfill.
References
Doherty, K. (2023, November 21). Before The Needle: How recycled PVC is being used to make vinyl. The Vinyl Factory. https://www.thevinylfactory.com/features/before-the-needle-recycled-pvc-vinyl
