A GREEN RECORD COLLECTION?

With our favourite recording stars appearing on stage all over the world telling us we need to revise our lifestyle to save the planet, I hope record collectors are also prepared to reconsider their future methods.

Traditional format collecting is not very Earth-friendly. Plastic and alloy discs require use of scarce resources for a base, use obnoxious chemicals in production, are incarcerated in wasteful packaging and require scarce fuel for transport.

Finally the purchases then have to be stored on racks hacked down from fast-disappearing rainforests.

The alternative is a virtual record collection of music and picture files held on a hard drive (the modern equivalent of a record deck). A much lower carbon footprint, I’m sure. Of course it would help if download companies priced their tracks according to the quality of product they are offering (say, no more than 10p per track) then all collectors could jump on board, to the greener virtual economy.

Fortunately collectors are anyway deserting the old fixed format style of collecting in their millions. Hopefully your magazine’s The Collector column will be taking a lead in focusing on green sustainable collections in the near future?

No. – Ed.

by Steve Islip
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