• Recycled vinyl records have been turned into all sorts of unlikely artworks.vinyl record and cds image by Warren Millar from Fotolia.com
  
  Although still prized by music aficionados, old vinyl records hold little appeal once they become scratched, warped or otherwise unplayable. This has not deterred people from using records in ways that their performers never envisioned. Old records have been re-imagined into all types of objects, such as food dishes, wall clocks, and even public artworks. Long established as the world's most popular plastic, vinyl requires less energy to produce and does not break apart in landfills, characteristics that make it ideal recycling material. Not surprisingly, the environmentalist movement has led the way to acceptance of these unlikely creations.
  
  

Household Materials

• Not surprisingly, the most common uses of vinyl focus on recycling it to be made into household materials, according to the environmental activist website, My Zero Waste. Examples include bottles, floor tiles, garden hoses, pipes and traffic cones. Most of this activity is centered in the United States and United Kingdom.
  
  

Household Objects

• Companies like Philadelphia-based Vinylux specialize in refashioning old records into a variety of eco-friendly household objects, including bowls, bracelets and coasters. Keeping the original labels intact, Vinylux produces an object that it expects customers to cherish as much as the original record. As of 2008, the company had transformed about 300,000 albums and album covers, and 45 rpm singles -or 80,000 pounds of cardboard and vinyl--after five years in business. Other companies have successfully refashioned old 45s and cassette cases into iPod cases, proving that the exploitation of obsolete formats is only as limited as the repackager's imagination.
  
  

Public Art

• Demand for new and exciting artworks has led to the use of old vinyl into public displays. One of the more unusual examples is visible in the city of Jacksonville, FL, whose Public Art Commission oversaw the reuse of old vinyl into sculptures of a fish and a snake. Like the one-off objects created by Vinylux, vinyl and cardboard figure prominently in the Jacksonville artworks.
  
  

Art Exhibits

• Old records have inspired modern artists like Paul Villinski, who featured them in "My Back Pages," his December 2008 exhibit at New York's Museum of Art and Design. Villinski listened to his favorite albums by Miles Davis, Fleetwood Mac and Herbie Hancock one last time, then cut them into butterfly-shaped pieces. The resulting work, according to the Wall Street Journal, amounted to a marriage of Villinski's life and art--in the most literal sense.
  
  

Chipboard

• Vinylux sends unusable album covers to recycle into chipboard, according to the recycling-oriented website, About My Planet. Whenever possible, the company uses minimal printing and nontoxic printing materials, too.