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As it is Blog Action Day I decided to do a special post about what Guitar Companies can and are doing to help the environment.

We all know that the rainforests in Brazil are being harvested so rapidly that it is driving some species of trees to extinction, well one of these species is Brazillian Rosewood one of the finest materials for building guitars. In Australia, and in many parts of our world, 70+% of our forest cover has been removed in less than 200 years (reference).

The question is, what can be done about this? Do luthiers need to switch to using composite materials? Is carbon-fibre the only alternative? Well some people seem to think this isn’t necessarily the only answer. Cole Clark guitars here in Australia are promoting use of a timber called Bunya which is similar to Spruce and is used for soundboards on acoustic guitars and puts on a good amount of biomass each year, is relatively quick growing, good for absorbing carbon, bears edible fruit and has strong links to Australia’s indigenous people. Maton also use Bunya as well as a few other native species such as Queensland Maple.

Ellis Guitars in Western Australia have been Certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and has the following statements on their site:

“Taking responsibility for forest management by protecting biodiversity, productivity and ecological processes.
Taking responsibility socially helping both local people and society in the long term. Educating local people on the benefits of sustaining natural resources.
Taking responsibility economically structuring operations so profit is not at the expense of natural resources or locals.“

And this responsibility by luthiers is the key. Taylor Guitars are trying to dedicate a forest in Alaska for musical wood, something they are working toward along with Gibson, Martin, Fender, Greenpeace, the Forestry Stewardship Council and Sealaska (a Native American logging company). This would provide US guitar makers with a sustainable resource that is responsibly managed, far more appealing than moving logging to a new country and ravaging their supplies. Meanwhile 80-90% of Gibson’s regular production electric guitars contain mostly SmartWood-certified wood, SmartWood is one of the certifiers endorsed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Rainforest Alliance.

“Taylor says guitar manufacturers know the woods that sound good and that don’t - there is no new miracle wood out there. So in lieu of using less traditional woods they are working on buying from more and more ecologically responsible forestry companies.“ - via GearWire

Apart from using sustainable materials some companies are taking a new approach. For instance Wheatware guitar picks which were used at this years Live Earth event. These picks are “Bio-Compostable products are designed to biodegrade in 45 to 90 days in microbially-active soil or a commercial compost facility“, this production doesn’t impact on the Wheat supply either. Meanwhile Composite Acoustics “...have replaced traditional materials with carbon fiber - a man-made composite that is stronger, lighter and more consistent“. You only have to read their Advantage section on their site to see they truly believe in great sounding carbon fibre instruments, but many purists will simply reject these guitars in favour of natural materials so don’t expect the current generation of guitarists to start switching just yet. Aside from taking a drastic approach to materials some companies are helping out with their packaging, I spoke to Dean Markley recently and he had this to say: “...our packaging is Environmentally friendly. Some of the packaging is made from recycled material and all of the packaging can be recycled.“.

So are “Green” guitars plausible? Yes, it means guitar companies need to take responsibility something that has obviously been happening for a while now, and for customers to be educated on instruments made from sustainable woods. These customers just need to realise that sustainable woods can sound just as good as traditional materials.