Can rock go green? You’ve evaluated your transport, your diet, and your electricity usage. What about your musical equipment? Following the warmest ever documented decade, it is obvious that every decision you make has environmental implications—even the decision to rock. Here are some of the latest developments in eco-friendly guitars.
Rock and Roll gained the momentum of a rolling stone before hurtling into establishment at Woodstock, New York, in 1969. “World-wide demand for wood has increased by 64% since the 1960s and continues to rise.”1 Coincidence that rock music peaked as worldwide demand for wood began to rise? Yes, absolutely. Instrument production is responsible for very little of the destruction of forest cover worldwide and we have a million other industries to blame before pointing our collective finger at rock musicians and their axes. As the founder of Taylor Guitars, Bob Taylor, points out, his company uses the same amount of Sitka spruce in one year that a logging mill might cut in one day.2 That being said, the guitar industry is not entirely guilt-free.
There are around 200 species used to make musical instruments. In guitar making, species like Rosewood, Mahogany, Maple, Ebony, and Spruce are especially valued for superior tonal qualities, workability, durability, and beauty.3 Unfortunately, many of these species grow only in small patches in densely forested areas.4 To reach them, loggers often remove all of the surrounding forest. A second problem is that many woods valued by guitar makers, such as the Sitka Spruce, are also demanded by other industries, such as home building.
While the rocking hippies of the sixties would likely protest against something as ‘square’ as a certification program, that is exactly what many of the world’s top guitar producers are participating in. Recognizing their responsibility to the forest, most of the major guitar manufacturers have started making at least some of their guitars with wood approved by the Forest Stewardship Council, or FSC. To date, the FSC has approved “nearly 50 million acres of forest worldwide” by evaluating at a tree’s age, location and (most importantly) rate of extraction.5 Companies working with the FSC include Walker Guitars, which makes sure that its exotic species from South America are FSC approved; Martin Guitars, which recently unveiled the 100% FSC certified D Mahogany” guitar; and Gibson USA, which aims to use sustainable wood in 80% of its guitars by 2012. Gibson also runs the Gibson Foundation, which supports the Environmental Defense and Rainforest Alliance.6
Taylor Guitars is taking part too. In 2007, Bob Taylor, the company’s founder, assembled an environmental task force including guitar manufacturers Fender and Gibson, environmental watchdog Greenpeace, the Forestry Stewardship Council and a native-American logging firm, Sea-Alaska, to ensure that Alaska’s remaining Sitka Spruces are harvested sustainably. Ultimately, Taylor’s hope is that the Sitka spruce meets a different fate than the New York Adirondack, which was once the preferred material of guitar makers but virtually disappeared during the post-World War II housing boom. Today the story is the same but the wood different, as most of Sitka Spruces are shipped to burgeoning “Asian markets for home construction and millwork.”7 While he and his partners are working to “get approximately 190,000 acres of coastal temperate rainforest FSC certified,” Taylor knows that, in spite of his best efforts, the Sitka might someday cease to be a viable guitar-building material. To prepare for this, and to alleviate the stress on certain species of trees, Taylor has diversified by “chang[ing] some factory techniques that allow [his company] to use a broader range of grades of wood.”8
Rather than work with the FSC, the company First Act looked east for inspiration when it produced the world’s first bamboo guitar. What makes bamboo better? It is one of the fastest growing plants (it is a grass, not a tree) in the world, meaning that “many species…can grow two feet or more a day.” This makes it “an uncommonly renewable resource.” Aside from its renewability, bamboo has additional benefits: when farmed it “stabilizes the earth with its roots, preventing erosion.”9 Bamboo also absorbs carbon dioxide and produces “35% more oxygen than an equivalent stand of trees.”10 For a musician, however, the question is not of timber but of timbre—how does a bamboo guitar sound? According to First Act’s site, the Bambusa guitar is “supreme-sounding and [a] killer-looking substitute for high quality tonewoods.” A bit biased, perhaps, but independent reviewers seem to agree that the Bambusa gives a good tone, and priced at $299.00, it is also quite affordable.
The Finnish company, Flaxwood Guitars, simply went to its own backyard for material and found a common type of European spruce to build their guitars with. Its proximity to Flaxwood’s Finnish factories makes for a low transport footprint. After binding this spruce with a “special polymer that ensures consistent tonal integrity,” Flaxwood Guitars are molded, rather than cut, into a shape. The result is a guitar that is fully recyclable. If a guitar doesn’t pass the company’s strict quality control, it is melted down to produce a new one. Flaxwood claims its guitar is the most environmentally sound one on the market and that it has a “warm resonance, wonderful playability and vintage tone [which] will give you that Feeling.”11 Seeing as Flaxwood’s Leikki model just recently received the highest possible five star review from Premier Magazine, this claim amounts to more than mere boasting.
Guitar makers account for a large part of the $30 billion dollar global music market, and they listen to the consumer. By purchasing from companies that work with the FSC or use sustainable materials such as bamboo and flaxwood, you are doing your small part to keep eco-friendly guitar makers rocking and rolling well into the 21st century.
Extra notes:
Green innovation doesn’t stop with the guitar: Yamaha Keyboards now offers an “eco-friendly power adaptor that consumes far less energy than its standard adaptor.”12 The PA 50 power adaptor can be bought here.
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