Introducing the first ever playable record made from recycled ocean plastic

From the beaches of Cornwall, England Sharp’s Brewery has partnered with creative agency Havas London to raise money for coastal protection. Alongside their Vivendi sister company in the music industry, Universal Music Group, a record is being pressed from recycled ocean plastics. In The Anthropocene is a 10 inch single track album from musician Nick Mulvey. The innovative vinyl manufacturer behind this project is Tangible Formats, using ocean plastic found along the coastline of Cornwall. Physical record sales as well as digital stream proceeds are going to Surfers Against Sewage, a UK based organization working to save British coastlines from pollution.

Nick Mulvey is a Mercury Music Prize nominated artist and a founding member of the band Portico Quartet. In The Anthropocene is credited as a collaboration with Keynvor, the Cornish word for ocean. It is also the name given by Universal Music imprint Mercury KX to describe the sounds of the ocean transformed as a recording artist. In a statement about the record Mulvey gives some background on his inspiration for the track.

“I’ve always loved the wildness of the Cornish coast, and it feeds something deep in me every time I’m there,” Mulvey says. “My music is about knowing who—or what—we are, right at the core. Aliveness itself, conscious. These times of urgent global crisis are demanding we re-examine ourselves and the world and raise ourselves to match the Earth, this wonder-organism from which we are not, and never have been, separate.”

Give a listen to a YouTube version of the track below.

There is no doubt that you’ll find single use plastics at concerts and on our beaches. As music events rely on disposable plastics our oceans are filling with that terrible plastic waste. The creative ideas that lead to this recycled record could be easily used right here in the PNW.

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