Would you buy a record sleeve without the vinyl inside? It's one way to reduce plastic

This weekend’s annual Record Store Day (RSD) (12 April) is another celebration of the world of the physical music product and the cherished places that sell it. The release list features nearly 450 different limited edition albums, EPs and singles by all from Taylor Swift to Charli XCX, David Bowie and A Tribe Called Quest. Almost all exclusively on vinyl. Snapped up eagerly by fans and collectors countrywide, they gave a welcome financial boost to independent shops, labels, artists and the music ecosystem at large.  

RSD is plainly a positive force. But the elephant in the room is the environmental ramifications of pumping out so much new plastic. The majority of vinyl records are manufactured from poly-vinyl chloride (PVC) – one of the most environmentally damaging plastics. It can take nearly 500 years for PVC to biodegrade if it ends up in landfill. 

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For many RSD releases, the runs will have been small – in the low thousands of copies. Nothing compared to, say, Adele’s last album 30 in 2021 (a whopping 500,000 copies pressed). And a mere drop in the ocean of the 6.7 million vinyl albums sold in the UK in 2024 – a 9.1% increase on the previous year, and a 17th consecutive year of growth. But as the world slides deeper into climate crisis, any amount of non-essential new pollutant has to be considered too much pollutant. Clearly fresh thinking is required. 

So, what if a vinyl record contained no record at all? 

Set up by academics at the University of Glasgow, Doughnut Music Lab is an art and research collective that draws on ideas from doughnut economics (economies built around sustainability rather than endless growth) to imagine what shape musical life might take in a post-fossil-fuel future. They’ve begun investigating a novel proposal – 12” sleeves with all the cool packaging, artwork, inserts and added extras of a normal record, but with a download code in place of a disc.

“Vinyl-less vinyl,” as they call it. It’s rooted in the assumption that younger fans are more interested in vinyl as a way to display their fandom than for its superior audio qualities. Thus, they might be persuaded to switch to plastic-swerving alternatives, especially if they were cheaper.

To test this theory, Doughnut Music boffins did a clever thing: they talked to Taylor Swift fans. Swift’s album The Tortured Poets Department was the biggest selling UK vinyl release of 2024, with 112,000 units shifted (her third consecutive year atop the year-end vinyl chart). Doughnut Music surveyed 1,000 so-called Swifties, asking them a wide range of questions that together provide an intriguing snapshot into modern-day vinyl buying and listening habits. 

The data proved Doughnut Music’s hunch correct. A massive 87% of the respondents aged 18-24 rated “sharing and displaying your tastes and fandom” as a very important reason for buying vinyl. Only 33% of 18- to 24-year-olds considered “perceived difference in audio quality” as a reason to choose vinyl over streaming.

When asked if they listened to their favourite Swift tracks via streaming platforms rather than vinyl “for the sake of convenience”, 60% of Swifties said they do so “all the time”; 10% revealed that they don’t even own a turntable. And yet, 57% of fans own multiple versions of the same Swift album, with some superfans possessing up to eight copies of a single LP.

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On the key question of whether buying a “vinyless-vinyl” Swift album in the interests of reducing plastic waste might appeal to them, one in four respondents said they’d be open-minded. Not a huge number – clearly Swifties are still a long way from ready to shake off their vinyl habits completely – but evidence of a gap in the market that could be grown further with more innovative thinking. 

Doughnut Music will continue to test the idea by sponsoring a proper release by an independent label later this year. But the project’s co-lead Dr Graeme Hunt, a research associate at the University of Glasgow, stresses that they don’t see it as “a one-size-fits-all solution”. Other alternatives are available.

Bioplastic, or plant-based vinyl, while not environmentally unproblematic, is slowly becoming a realistic alternative. Melting down and recycling old vinyl records is plausible and already quite widely practised. Vinyless-vinyl releases could conceivably slip into future record collections made using a whole range of materials and methods and still including old-fashioned PVC LPs. Which, whatever the future may hold, will continue to be traded second-hand for a long time to come (the plastic will be around for at least the next half a millennium or so, after all). 

The music industry in general is a low-carbon emitter compared to energy, transport, food and manufacturing. But it is highly influential and can be a leader of change in wider society. Solving its plastic problem means future-proofing physical product, and thus events like Record Store Day.

As Doughnut Music Lab co-lead and University of Glasgow professor of music Matt Brennan sees it, the whole process begins with identifying what fundamentally makes wax so hot among passionate listeners and figuring out how to fulfil that need in a much more sustainable way.

“Part of what we’re trying to learn is: what is ‘the fix’ for fans?” says professor Brennan. “What is it that they get out of consuming albums on vinyl? And how might we meet that fix in a way that minimises taking new oil out of the ground at all points in the supply chain? It’s a complicated question and inevitably a complicated road to an answer, but hopefully the survey contributes a small step towards the larger goal.”

Find out more about Doughnut Music Lab and more about Record Store Day.

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