NEW LIFE FROM OLD STRINGS
TerraCycle Include USA D'Addario
The structure and shape of strings make them difficult and costly to recycle. But that hasn’t stopped some manufacturers from tackling the challenge, and even extracting metal from old strings to use in new ones, writes Tom Stewart
According to the World Bank, more than two billion tons of domestic waste are generated across the planet each year, twelve per cent of it plastic and another four per cent metal. To say that strings for musical instruments make up a tiny proportion of this would be a huge understatement, but when you consider that manufacturers’ annual combined production runs to tens of millions of the things, it isn’t surprising that some companies have been keen to explore how they can prevent their products from ending up in landfill or an incinerator. I asked a range of string manufacturers what they made of emerging recycling technologies, and what they were doing to help the industry conserve the materials it uses.
According to the World Bank, more than two billion tons of domestic waste are generated across the planet each year, twelve per cent of it plastic and another four per cent metal. To say that strings for musical instruments make up a tiny proportion of this would be a huge understatement, but when you consider that manufacturers’ annual combined production runs to tens of millions of the things, it isn’t surprising that some companies have been keen to explore how they can prevent their products from ending up in landfill or an incinerator. I asked a range of string manufacturers what they made of emerging recycling technologies, and what they were doing to help the industry conserve the materials it uses.
US recycling firm TerraCycle teamed up with D’Addario in 2016 to launch string recycling scheme Playback
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY TERRACYCLE
Like the infamously difficult-torecycle disposable coff ee cup, strings are composite items, and their wiry, flexible form makes it tricky to process them in traditional machinery. Far removed from their humble origins as single pieces of animal gut, modern strings usually contain one or more diff erent metals, often surrounding a core made of steel, gut, or more frequently a synthetic material. Take, for example, the E string of Th omastik Infeld’s Peter Infeld violin strings. Players can choose between a tin-plated carbon steel core and a stainless steel core wiTheither gold or platinum plating. Or how about D’Addario’s Helicore cello strings, which feature a multi-stranded steel core wound, depending on the pitch of the string, in titanium or a combination of tungsten and silver. ‘All these metals are easily recyclable individually’, says D’Addario’s Brian Vance. ‘When you have to smelt them down together, though, it very quickly stops making financial sense to separate them back out again into their component parts. It’s good for the environment but it doesn’t tend to make you any money.’ Another limiting factor, as Alex Payne of US recycling firm TerraCycle explains, is the strings’ shape. ‘They’re long, thin and bendy, so they routinely tie up the shredders that are usually employed to process materials for recycling’, he says. ‘To avoid having to build diff erent shredders, we compress the strings before we prepare them for smelting.’