The Big Green Picture

When judging a product as sustainable or not at first glance, it’s easy to wonder about a few obvious characteristics. Is it recyclable? Was it built using endangered wood? But there’s plenty more to this whole “eco-friendly” thing than what’s sitting on the shelf. While guitar companies have come under pressure to better vet their building materials, many suppliers in the rest of the MI industry have been busy looking for other ways to clean up their operations.

Dream Cymbals: Having a Meltdown

“‘Eco-friendly’ is ‘business-friendly’ for us,” says Dream Cymbals president Andy Morris. Beyond a groundbreaking recycling program (more on that later), Dream maintains a sleek manufacturing and distribution process that saves energy whenever possible. At the factory, a new electric oven has been tested to ensure that it can match the characteristics for cymbals made using a coal/wood oven. The electric oven reduces Dream’s carbon footprint and increased efficiency and capacity by a factor of three. Dream also continues to resist lacquering its cymbals, citing the chemicals’ toxicity.

But the centerpiece might be Dream’s recycling program – which buys back old cymbals from customers. Once those cymbals are sorted and fully broken down, the resulting products from the material are reFX cymbals.

“This spring, we processed over 6,000 pounds of recycled cymbals in North America,” says Morris. “We tried accepting any cymbal for a while, feeling we could make reFX Crop Circles sonically out of even brass cymbals.” They quickly changed course, realizing some materials were too cheap or contaminated to use.

“We have fine tuned the program to where we feel it works very well in North America,” he says. “Yes, even better than expected.”

Morris says there’s a bonus for dealers involved in the program. “Dealers really understand the value of becoming a Dream recycling destination. It’s another tool that sets not only Dream dealers apart, but brick and mortar apart from online sellers.”

Pearl: Maximizing Materials

The interesting thing about these sorts of holistic approaches to getting the most out of each company’s workflow is that, on the surface, they might not even appear explicitly  “green.”  They just seem like a streamlined way to do things. Seiji Suzuki, who is on Pearl’s board of directors, says that Pearl has also put significant efforts into improving its packing materials while reducing the amount of resources needed to achieve safe transport of its products, including coming up with new schemes of achieving “box integrity” while avoiding Styrofoam whenever possible.

Suzuki says that the company has also made strides to limit the use of harmful chemicals like formaldehyde, which is used in glue for wood veneers.  “By reducing the amount used, we are reducing the impact and providing safer products,” he says.  All of Pearl wood products are California Air Resource Board (CARB) Compliant.

Yamaha: Environmentally Advanced

Yamaha’s factory in Xiaonshan, China (which makes wind and percussion instruments, along with acoustic drum sets) recently received recognition from the Xiaoshan Economic Technology Development Zone based on the reduction of polluted material and adaptation to emissions standards for water and energy. The group designated Yamaha as an “environmentally advanced” company in 2012 and 2013. According to Yamaha, the Xiaonshan factory filters all of its wastewater into pure H₂O, 95 percent of which is recycled back to the factory. They also cut overall solid waste from 879 tons in 2011 to 475 tons in 2012.

The factory also received an ISO14001 compliance rating from the International Standards Organization’s stringent environmental protocols. Additionally, over 90 percent of the factory’s wastewater is reused in manufacturing processes.

This past January, the city of Hamamatsu (which is home to Yamaha’s world headquarters) gave the company S-Class certification (the highest level of certification) in the “Eco-Friendly Business Category” of its “Hamamatsu City New Energy/Energy Conservation Top Runner Certification Program.” Yamaha received recognition for actions such as the installation of a solar power generation system at company headquarters, a cogeneration facility at its Tenryu factory, the creation of green curtains and installation of energy-saving equipment at each office, and encouraging employees and their families to engage in environmentally-related activities.

Furthermore, Dave Jewell, marketing communications manager [at YCA] says that Yamaha Corp. of America has followed Yamaha Corp. of Japan’s lead in its pursuit of a sustainable packaging policy. “Our external packaging is made from cardboard with a high recycled content to reduce the demand for new wood-based products,” he says. “In addition, a significant portion of the internal packaging for our product is made from molded pulp or corrugated (cardboard), both of which are 100 percent biodegradable. This dramatically reduces the amount of packing that ends up in landfills, such as Styrofoam (EPS).”

Wi Digital : Complete Package

“Whether you call it green, eco-friendly, or sustainable packaging, companies are looking for more ways than ever to go green with their packaging for very good reasons,” says Pierre Abboud, chief operating and technology officer at Wi Digital System. “We believe companies that highlight their environmental status to consumers, can boost sales, product reputation, and most importantly enhance the bottom line in many ways.”

For their part, Wi Digital has focused on a thorough green design of all packaging materials of its wireless systems (including digital transceiver/receivers, headsets, mics, and accessories). “We have streamlined the size of our retail boxes by reducing the amount of corrugated cardboard and eliminating excess packaging, foam blocks and shrink wrap around the product from our packaging,” says Abboud. The packaging instead takes the form of durable, versatile, reusable carrying cases that are easy to recycle.

The packaging works for the bottom line in a number of ways, including reducing costs of creating the packaging, decreasing the weight and size of products to reduce transportation costs, and making it easier to unpack/repack products with less wasted materials. It doesn’t hurt that the unique packaging design makes for what Abboud calls an “eye-catching, fantastic out-of-box first impression.”

Sabian: Cymbals Get a Second Life

Sabian has circumvented a typical source of waste – piles of promotional cymbals – by figuring out a way to repurpose old cymbals with a simple but exclusive finishing process. They call it the SR-2 series. “We send a lot of artists our cymbals for tours or marketing events,” says marketing manager Luis Cordoso. “Rather than completely melt them down and deal with all the energy that entails, we have a refurbishing process that involves an exclusive finishing and we sell them for a reduced price. They look and feel different than any cymbal we produce.” What this basically results in is items like top B-20 bronze cymbals going to customers at greatly reduced prices. Cardoso says attentive customers will be able to identify models as, say, an HH-X just by its sound. The program began in 2007 and has recently expanded to include orchestral cymbals.

All that on top of a long-established culture of environmental consciousness at the company’s factory in New Brunswick, Canada.

“We do the standard things that everybody tries to do,” says Cordoso. “We recycle everything. Making cymbals, you’re using copper and tannin. There’s not many other ways to make them. So where can we go?” The company recycles metal created in most cymbal-making steps as well as cymbals that don’t pass quality tests. Water used in the factory is filtered and reused. They always seek to print catalogs with FSC-approved printing firms, and heat from the factory’s cymbal ovens is used to heat the buildings during the winter, among several other green policies in place.

Vic Firth: The Top-to-Bottom Approach

Back in 1992, when the environmental movement was comparatively fringe, Vic Firth was already looking at ways to ease the burden on the planet. A move as simple as packaging paired sticks in paper “matchbox” sleeves, which the company pioneered in 1992, now eliminates millions of plastic bags from landfills every year. Today, those recyclable sleeves are even more green than ever, printed using wind power at an FSC-certified supplier with vegetable-based ink.

“I imagine Vic’s environmental focus has inspired other companies to look at ways that they can improve their processes, too. And that’s a good thing for everyone,” says Rob Grad, who handles PR for Vic Firth.

At Vic Firth’s Newport, Maine facility, many of the company’s processes have been altered to maximize efficiency and eliminate waste whenever possible. Water used during grinding operations is recycled, while leftover sawdust is sent to a power plant for fuel. Warm air from the mill is later returned to the building for heat.

“The grinding operation uses 10,000 gallons of water per hour and we re-use it and filter out the suspended solids 10 times per day (roughly every other hour),” says David Crocker, director of operations. “We run 20 hours per day, so the process uses 200,000 gallons of water per day.” Without the filter-and-reuse scheme, the company would be consuming 200,000 gallons per day. As it is, they’re only going through 8,000 gallons a day.

Further, fuel for the factory is created from scrap parts and dry sawdust from the turning operation. The boiler is used to generate steam that heats the building in winter and drives the kiln drying operation. Those kilns also now include energy efficient motors and vents thanks to a grant from the State of Maine. Smaller sawdust particles which are too fine to use in the boiler are formed into briquettes that are then sold to other mills.

Currently, changes made to the clear finish on Vic sticks have eliminated all materials listed by the EPA as Hazardous Air Pollutants.

In 2008, Vic Firth Inc. received the Maine Wood Product Association’s Pine Tree Award based on the company’s continued growth and diversification.

Grad notes that there are financial benefits to all of this. “When energy can be reused in the factory, that’s less energy that you’re taking from the grid,” he says. “Vic Firth has always had the long-term vision in mind. If we destroy where we are, we can’t be in business 30 years from now.”