PIANOS RECYCLED

More than 2,500 pianos will be dumped in Australia this year.

Pianos Recycled is a 6-year-old, circular economy, for-purpose enterprise with a mission to find and develop value-creating alternatives to landfill for unwanted pianos. Old pianos contain rare and increasingly precious materials that can be reused by craftspeople in their projects.

Our guiding belief is that the possibilities to create value from waste are only limited by the imagination.

A piano is both a percussion and acoustic instrument and our first objective is to restore a piano to playing condition where feasible. Where not feasible, we deconstruct it to reclaim its materials in collaboration with makers, including instrument makers, to create something new, unique and respectful of piano heritage.

The makers in our exhibition have accepted the challenge to create instruments and musicians accessories that incorporate piano materials.

By the middle of 2022 Pianos Recycled had processed more than 275 pianos. 110 of these were repaired/retuned and will continue their lives as pianos including 65 pianos that we placed in schools across metropolitan Melbourne through our Programme for Recycled Educational Pianos in Schools (PREPS), and helping to nurture young people’s creative and musical potential.

The materials found in an unwanted piano mostly come from old-growth forests of Europe and North America. Those resources have long been depleted or no longer exist and clearly support the argument that there is a need to protect our environment from a dumped piano. (And other reusable materials)

In offering quality materials to makers, we have so far diverted more than 65 tonnes of restorable, reusable and/or recyclable materials from landfill. Of our deconstructed pianos we reclaimed 16.5 tonnes of beautiful timbers and veneers for repurposing and recycled 14 tonnes of metal.

Imagine. Design. Create.