This past week Pianos Recycled celebrated our 500th piano rescue. As milestones go, it arrived after 8.5 years of hard work!
At an environmental level, 500 processed piano means 40 tonnes of cast-iron frames, around 2 tonnes of steel, brass, and copper material that were kept from landfill and went to metal recycling instead. A further 100 tonnes of timber and parts were kept well away from the wheel-tracks of your local Waste Transfer Centre bulldozer. As any follower of our social media pages would know, the timber component alone can be utilised far more productively to make great furniture and various wood products. The successful separation of the metalware, time consuming though it is, is making a significant reduction of waste to landfill. Iron frames do not decompose in landfill, and neither do tuning-pins, piano wire, lead-weights and assorted components.
It is satisfying that the 500th piano is a Wertheim upright, made locally here in Melbourne over 100 years ago. There’s a nice fuzzy feeling about that, and although we can hear raised voices already about this being a poor result for an Australian made piano, this will be a far superior outcome than the alternative (see above!)
Five hundred pianos renewed, recycled or transformed is a remarkable achievement really, given our small and humble beginnings. We are aware that the next 500 will come a lot quicker. As a global leader in this space, it appears from our surveying of the international scene that our work is an inspiration for others across the world treading a similar path.
One of the growing trends we have observed is the increasing number of enquiries from interstate,
with the obvious population NSW capital Sydney featuring strongly among those. We are already looking at how piano recycling might operate in the Sydney and Brisbane areas even whilst we are Victoria-focused. But a growing broader national focus is on the agenda with what appears to be an unrelenting demand for piano recycling services.
Despite our milestone, and despite our considerable efforts, Australians will still throw out another 2,500 pianos again this year, so we have some way to go. BUT, we have great hopes for the future, invested in our younger generation and their acceptance that recycling and intelligent use of our planet’s finite resources are an integral part of their future. We saw that first hand this week as we hosted students from an RMIT Industrial Design course at our facility in Braeside. Tasked with a project to develop their own musical instrument from our recycled material they came armed with open minds and fresh ideas. It will be great to see the paths of exploration and invention they have taken come the end of the next semester. We look forward to the great reveal in just a few months time.
Meanwhile, Sydney beckons as we now have a couple of clients who would like their pianos
transformed by us, and thus we are venturing north in September to Sydney to fill the Renault with
pianos and return. Just a drop in a large pond to be sure but if you are a Sydney resident and keen
to make use of our services, Now is the time to contact us!
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