First playable record made from ocean plastic

On 4 October 2019, British musician Nick Mulvey, in partnership with Cornwall's Sharp’s Brewery (UK), released a limited-edition vinyl record of his song "In the Anthropocene" that was made entirely from single-use plastic, including fishing line, candy wrappers and crisp packets that had been recovered from the Cornish coastline. The record was cut by custom vinyl maker Wesley Wolfe of Tangible Formats in Florida, USA.

Proceeds from the track, including from sales of the limited-edition record pressed onto recycled plastic and digital streams, went to the marine-conservation charity Surfers Against Sewage to help protect British coastlines from pollution, including plastic waste.

Fittingly, the song – which is named after the current geological era, defined as the "age of humans" – deals with concepts of freedom as well as environmental and social responsibility in today's world.

Mulvey commented on the first-of-its-kind project: "I've always loved the wildness of the Cornish coast and it feeds something deep in me every time I'm there. My music is about knowing who - or what - we are, right at the core. Aliveness itself, conscious. These times of urgent global crisis are demanding we re-examine ourselves and the world and raise ourselves, individually and collectively, to match the Earth, this wonder-organism from which we are not, and never have been, separate.