CDs could fix this.
But is vinyl really that bad?
“I still love physical products.
Annie Spratt / Unsplash
12-Inch Footprint
Henkes argument rests on the environmental concerns of vinyl, and hes got a point.
Vinyl is made from plastic polyvinyl chloride, aka PVC, which comes from petrochemicals.
Vinyl record manufacturing can create anorder of magnitude more emissionsthan other physical media, like CDs.
Clem Onojeghuo / Unsplash
But some record-pressing companies are cleaning things up.
Clem Onojeghuo / Unsplash
But none of this really matters.
Think of the environmental effects of the batteries in every gadget we use, for starters.
“It sounds like CDs still don’t have the archival potential of vinyl either.
Far more important is making mobile phones sustainable.”
Vinyl manufacturing might be dirty, but its scale means its overall impact is small.
And there’s also a healthy used market for buying and trading records.
Streaming Is Worse
And guess what?
And vinyl has a fixed environmental cost.
CDs Just Arent As Cool
Henke likes CDs and realizes they’re technologically superior in many ways.
But we don’t buy vinyl for any of those reasons.
We like it because it’s analog in a digital age.
Yes, vinyl sounds great, but there’s a lot more to it than that.
Meanwhile, CDs are digital, exactly the same as a file on a computer.
You might as well store them on an old iPod.
It sounds like CDs still dont have the archival potential of vinyl either.
“Another big reason is that collectability factor.
Vinyl and cassettes are seen as more personal and unique.”
And it will probably outlast them all.
