All it took was a little drama to teach millions of music fans worldwide about the environmental impact of vinyl. When pop star Billie Eilish, who is green in more ways than just her occasional hairstyle, gave an interview about sustainability last month, it went viral after the entire internet assumed her comments about wasteful packaging were aimed at Taylor Swift.

It didn’t take any drama, however, to push musician Dave Newell into making his then-hypothetical vinyl press as eco-friendly as possible. Quite the opposite, in fact. All he needed was a loving nudge from his wife, Betsy Bemis, to start building what ultimately became Audiodrome—the first solar-powered vinyl record press in the United States, and an excellent use case of what is possible when entrepreneurs create every aspect of a business with the environment in mind.

The house Newell and Bemis share in Gainesville, Florida, is teeming with vinyl. It fills up every nook and cranny of their basement. Newell has been a collector for as long as he can remember, crate-digging in thrift stores at age 13. When he began making beats and rhymes under the name Enoch, with the hip-hop group CYNE, vinyl took on a different meaning in his life.

It was the early aughts, when Napster-weaned music fans were just starting to abolish compact discs from their budgets. Committing records to wax at the time was mostly a way to ensure that DJs could spin them. Nobody yet knew that within two decades, vinyl would reemerge as the gold standard of physical media in the music world—outselling CDs by a mile.

“It’s no secret that streaming does not pay very well,” Newell says. “It’s fractions of pennies for artists, and if you’re not putting up Taylor Swift numbers, it’s really hard to make a living off of that. So vinyl has kind of become this Band-Aid that helps a lot of artists make a living.”

An independent artist can press a record and sell it with a much larger profit margin than they might get for an exponential amount of more streams. The only problem is that getting vinyl made is a difficult process for musicians who exist outside of the zeitgeist. Artists who are not signed to major labels are now expected to not only be musicians, but hands-on experts in all the myriad technical details involved with creating a record—from correctly formatting album art files to getting audio mastered specifically for vinyl.

As if those challenges weren’t daunting enough, the current vinyl craze has also caused serious supply-chain problems in recent years. Now that Target can potentially move hundreds of thousands of Olivia Rodrigo records, pressing facilities around the country are working overtime to meet surging demands for the heavy hitters. An artist on Newell’s level, who might want to press less than a thousand records, is bound to find scant few facilities with the capacity to take on such a project, let alone turn it around in time to meet a planned release date.

As Newell tinkered with the beats for his long-gestating solo debut, Waiting for Something to Happen, he also considered the possibility of creating his very own vinyl press as well. (“My two white whales.”) Nearing middle age, he realized it was now or never to make his vision a reality. He decided to go for it. 

There was just one hitch, though, that he hadn’t anticipated.

“When we started talking about the idea of a vinyl press, I immediately said that if we’re going to do this, the only way I’ll feel comfortable is if we do it in a way that’s as thoughtful and mindful as we can possibly be,” says Bemis.

Licorice pizza’s carbon footprint

Environmentalism has been a part of Bemis’s life for as long as vinyl has been a part of Newell’s, if not longer. It’s the way she was raised, and a mission she has continued dedicating herself to since she’s had the capacity to put her money where her values are in the marketplace. So when Newell first mentioned the possibility of a record press, her mind immediately went to the environmental dangers of vinyl.

Long before Billie Eilish’s recent interview, green-minded folks have been banging the drum about vinyl’s carbon footprint. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is the main ingredient in the plastic plates that used to be called licorice pizza. Not only does PVC contain carcinogenic chemicals, the process of pressing it is said to produce toxic wastewater. Bemis became acquainted with the toxicity of PVC during a home-remodeling project years ago, which quickly sent her down an internet rabbit hole of vinyl’s impact. The idea of her husband owning a vinyl press was shrouded in red flags that would need to be greened up. 

Newell, no environmental slouch himself, quickly agreed with her idea about an eco-friendly approach, and the pair began investigating what would be possible with their limited means.

The pair agreed to split up duties, with Newell researching machinery options and Bemis taking on supplies. They looked far and wide to find out what previous mindful vinyl manufacturers were doing, and found a lot of precedents. Many folks in the vinyl world had long ago landed on recycling trimmings, along with records that didn’t pass quality control, to press new albums without creating fresh PVC.

Newell and Bemis would do so too. A company called Viryl landed on their radar for making steamless record presses, which use little water and zero fossil fuels. They quickly secured one for their facility. Bemis also took a special interest in every aspect of the packaging, finding a shrink wrap option made from 51% sugarcane, along with some innovative alternatives for poly bags, the plastic sleeves directly cradling records.

Here comes the sun  

The north star on couple’s journey was Deepgrooves, a vinyl press operating out of the Netherlands that is green in every regard—right down to its carbon-neutral shipping process. Most tantalizing of all, Deepgrooves runs off of solar power.

“Solar was the big one. It was something we deeply wanted but it was in the ‘we’ll get there, eventually’ column,” Bemis says. “We didn’t, in our wildest dreams, think we would have the fortune of having it on day one.”

As Newell was searching for potential locations for the future site of Audiodrome, he came across an office park called San Felasco Tech City. Conceived as a multipurpose sustainable work space, San Felasco uses solar trees to power an eclectic variety of businesses, including a biomedical research lab, a brewery, and an engineering company. That this facility had the infrastructure to accommodate a vinyl press was attractive enough already, but the fact that it would be powered by solar energy sealed the deal.

Although Audiodrome—which opens for business on Earth Day, April 22—is the first facility of its kind to run on solar power in the U.S., solar is set to play a bigger part in the music industry moving forward, as more sustainability minded artists enter the fray.

“Our Music Decarbonization Project has been working to reduce the use of fossil fuels and eliminate greenhouse gas pollution in all aspects of the music industry,” says Lauren Sullivan, cofounder of REVERB, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing environmental concerns in the music business. “Utilizing zero-emission energy sources like solar, whether it’s to power a stage or a vinyl press, is an important step in that direction.”

As he began building Audiodrome, Newell only had his own album, and those of some close friends, on deck as test projects. He wanted to wait until he was comfortable enough with the vinyl-pressing process, and its eco-friendliness was ensured, before expanding the business. Word got out about what he and Bemis were building, however, and interest began to build. They’ve since received quite a few orders, ranging from independent artists to a couple labels they’re currently in talks with. Newell feels creatively fired up, too, knowing that he can now put out a new record whenever he feels like it, and help other independent artists with whatever size orders they need—in a way that all parties involved can feel good about.

The more that Newell and Bemis sought to make their vinyl press eco-friendly, the more ways they found of doing so. Their only hope now is that when other artists and labels see every green aspect of Audiodrome, they’ll start searching for ways they can improve their own processes too.