Here comes recycled vinyl again. But this time, it’s different.

The OPEC oil shock of 1974 sent ripples throughout the world’s economy. One of the affected areas was the recorded music industry because polyvinyl chloride–the thing used to make vinyl records–is a petrochemical. Because the cost of the raw material went up, the recorded music industry needed a plan.

One move was to adopt recycled vinyl: melt down old, unsold records and use that to press new records. This sounds great in principle, but in practice, it was awful. Recycled vinyl introduced impurities into the process, resulting in records that were noisy, scratched easily, and often came out of the package with skips.

Labels also skimped on the amount of vinyl used to make a record, resulting in thin, wobbly slabs of plastic that sounded horrible because the grooves were substandard. I once bought and returned a copy of BTO’s greatest hits three times because the first two were filled with skips.

Part of the reason so many people stampeded toward the compact disc in the early and mid-80s was that the quality of vinyl records was pure shite.

Today, vinyl collectors want virgin vinyl with each LP weighing at least 180 grams (although a lot of standard 140 gram vinyl is acceptable). But this hasn’t stopped research into the reuse of old vinyl. I mean, that’s environmentally responsible, right? We don’t need more non-biodegradable plastic lying around forever.

Warner Music Group and GZ Media are working on a project that transforms old unsold vinyl into proper commercial-grade stuff. The process involves a serious amount of shredding and reprocessing, creating new records that are between 10% and 100% recycled material.

A blind sound test carried out at Abbey Road by technical specialists returned some impressive results. On at least one occasion, a record made with recycled vinyl was judged to sound better than the same record made of virgin vinyl.

Positive stuff. Read more here.