But will it dissolve in water? Or will we start debating whether cane-based records sound better than the corn-syrup pressings? Bioplastic records could help decarbonise music business, says developer
One other way to reduce carbon is to turn everything off, put your ear close to the cartridge and spin the record yourself.
My thoughts: We'll see how good it sounds. That's foremost to me. If it sounds good and the cost is acceptable I might bite. Per the environmental issue; I not impressed. We will still use some type of energy to power up our systems. I'm all in for clean air etc, but I think even if this takes off, it will have a minimal effect. So, with that in mind, (unless its somehow proven this process is important for the environment) it's probably going to be cost and sound.
From the article: -- "[In] the little bit of lead-in and in between the tracks there's some surface noise. If you like that, if you're a 70s fan, you like that little crackling, great," he said, adding they are continuing to develop the product. --
I agree. That's why I wrote "unless it's proven to be important for the environment." I'm greatly concerned about the environment and the oil situation. Perhaps my post gave some the wrong impression. At times I appear to be skeptical of such claims. I think that's a process of age.
I really don't foresee biodegradable records to become a truly mass-market type of item and at best used in a handful of niche titles. Otherwise, they're inevitable ticking timebombs.
"[In] the little bit of lead-in and in between the tracks there's some surface noise. If you like that, if you're a 70s fan, you like that little crackling, great," I work hard to not get that
I always try to get people on board to celebrate Earth Day by turning off the lights for an hour. Those bastards that run the ICU are anti-Earth SOBs.
True. Petroleum isn't all bad, most of the man made molecules that make up our life saving medications originate from Petroleum. If you got rid of the all the Ford F150s and the SUVs and everyone drove what I drive we could have kept burning fossil fuel indefinitely. Could have. As for vinyl it has an indefinite life span and if it didn't end up in land fills what would be the harm. I don't think petroleum as a raw material necessarily contributes to green house gasses.
This is the underlying problem between the push away from fossil fuels. Sure it is a good idea to slow down climate change, but so many goods rely on plastics which come as a bypass of the gasoline industry. They are everywhere, from the device you are using to type these messages, domestic white products, to huge swathes of your car. The casework of every electronic product you can think of are plastic from the petrochemical industry. So changing from vinyl to a biodegradable polymer really is fiddling while Rome is burning.
Well, as per my earlier post, we're stuck with petrochemicals for the reasons in my last post. But it very definitely contributes to greenhouse gasses because the conversion process is exceptionally energy intensive. However, and here is a surprising statistic, the energy (and hence greenhouse gas production) used by the food industry worldwide far exceeds the global total of all transport (vehicles, ships, planes etc). So if you want to make a real difference, stop eating
It's all the methane production from the billions of mammals that we eat farting all the time and the biological breakdown of their feces and urine. Eat vegetables, fish and poultry.
Indeed -methane (farts and breakdown) is a much stronger a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide "Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH4 is 25 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period" from Overview of Greenhouse Gases | US EPA . We're vegetarian maybe four days a week, fish one day, chicken one day and red meat on a Sunday. Back to the topic. Against those statistics the greenhouse improvement from non-vinyl records is completely trivial.
Stream and be at the mercy of labels and artist management when your favorite music or masterings disappear. Data Centers are higher carbon emitters than many pressing plants.
Ridiculous greenwashing of course not just for the lack of longevity, but because as they openly admit to it being an inferior product. Wasting any resources on something that is inherently broken seems like the most irresponsible thing we could do, especially when regular old vinyl can easily last a century. Some ideas for the industry to reduce the footprint of the industry that I think would make a bigger impact: -Improve QC ensuring that use of the materials is being maximized, minimizing returns (emissions) and outright waste -Invest more in local pressing plants in high consumer countries like the USA to avoid shipping things back and forth to Eastern Europe -Re-design packaging to favor multi-use (re-sealable or otherwise) outers saving the landfill from the single use shrink and decreasing demand for aftermarket storage products. Utilize recycled stocks and efficient packaging for sleeves (ie direct-to-board over tip-on) -Deescalate the production of crappy FOMO RSD-style releases — the future thrift store junk records Of course these are tasks for all cross-industry, most of which will not make money — not just a simple panacea product that will net some VC's a good ROI.
Not only that, but previously "depleted" wells are yielding again making some people think that oil is a geologic phenomenon and not a biotic phenomenon(meaning that oil would never run out).
I wonder why the link didn't mention water vapor and clouds, which is the most effective heat-trapper of the greenhouse gasses.
Data Centers currently consume 1% to 1.5% of the entire planet's energy production. Or about 300TWh per annum (300,000MWh). Around half of that is to do with cryptocurrency mining (100-140TWh pa)! That puts 300Mega tons of CO2 into the atmosphere a year. Against that, all the vinyl pressing plants that ever existed running full time are a vanishingly small percentage of that mind boggling number.
Apologies - I got a decimal place wrong! Data Centers consume 300TWh per annum. That is 300,000GWh, or 300,000,000MWh. That is equivalent to 1,500 of the largest power station on the planet (the 3 gorges dam in China). Just for reference there are currently 62,500 power stations in the world. So why is someone trying to introduce an alternative to vinyl? Seems doubly crazy now I have a correct decimal place ;-)
You could argue that if you want a greener planet you should breathe out more CO2: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
