Everyone already knows vinyl is back. In 2023, people bought more vinyl LPs than CDs for the first time in 35 years, and even the bins of your local independent record store are likely stuffed with new releases from the world’s biggest pop stars.
But the remarkable resurgence of this supposedly obsolete music format has raised concerns over the environmental toll of manufacturing and shipping millions of what are essentially plastic discs.
“I can’t even express to you how wasteful it is,” Billie Eilish told Billboard earlier this year of the vinyl boom, and the way many artists are pressing multiple versions of an album to juice sales and chart position. “I find it really frustrating as somebody who really goes out of my way to be sustainable and do the best that I can and try to involve everybody in my team in being sustainable — and then it’s some of the…
