Case Study: Instrument Auditing and Recycling in Sheffield

Storing instruments is not exactly the most glamorous side of music education.

For music hubs dealing with vast inventory lists, older instruments taking up space, and new instruments to purchase, storage can quickly turn stressful.

Storage solutions can quickly get expensive. As music hubs and HLOs in England adjust to reorganisation, this can quickly get complicated. Then there is the question of what to do with older instruments. After all, even if these products are not being used, sending them to landfill is not the answer.

This is a conundrum that many hubs across England are facing. At pBone Music, we’ve had lots of conversations with hubs who want to free up space to save money and add new instruments, but who haven’t got the time or capacity to get things organised. That’s why our team is travelling the country to audit, recover, repair and recycle musical instruments.

Interested in chatting with us about how Instrument Auditing and Recycling can enhance your Music Hub?

Recycling musical instruments in Sheffield

Exciting things are happening in the Steel City. Harmony Works is an exciting collaboration between Sheffield Music Hub, Sheffield Music Academy, Brass Bands England, and Music in the Round, and a new project needs a new home. Sheffield Music Hub is part of the South Yorkshire Music Hub, with the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority as the lead organisation. The Harmony Works HQ will be at Canada House in the city centre, creating a new hub for young musicians across South Yorkshire. 

This £14m restoration project is exciting news for the city region, but what about the current stock of instruments?

That’s where pBone Music and recycling experts Veolia enter the conversation.

As part of pBone Music's strategic partnership with Sheffield Music Hub, we audited musical instruments across two storage sites in the city. Renting storage can be expensive, particularly with a new move and reorganisation on the horizon. 

Jonty Hines, Director of Education Partnerships at pBone Music, led the audit, casting an expert eye over everything from clarinets to cornets, flugelhorns to flutes. pBone Music’s support for hubs with older stock launched last year when Jonty was asked to investigate pBones and pTrumpets at another hub. “With services like Inspiring Music in Central Bedfordshire,” says Jonty, "We have brought pInstruments back to life through our servicing and repair programme. At Norfolk Music, I rescued another 18 pBones from going into recycling. Some elbow grease and a few simple spare parts can save hubs a lot of money, and cut down on the carbon cost, too.”

With instruments like pBone that are manufactured from ABS plastic, recycling is straightforward. Instruments that cannot be repaired are recycled with household waste and can quickly find another use. But instruments made from wood and brass pose different problems that can quickly eat into a hub’s precious time. “Cases can be difficult to recycle, and the sheer volume and variety of instruments that many hubs have in storage add to the workload,” says Jonty. “But the good thing is that our strategic partners care as much about sustainability as we do: we don’t want to see good instruments go to waste, and broken ones head to landfill.”

That’s why staff from Sheffield Music Hub were mucking in with the pBone Music team to get hundreds of instruments out of storage and back to our own space for sorting and inspection. In total, more than 560 instruments were collected, including violins, euphoniums, oboes, bassoons, and baritone horns. “We found some really interesting instruments, including a rare bass clarinet,” says Jonty, conjuring visions of the Antiques Roadshow. “We also found plenty of good quality instruments that can be refreshed and repaired, which is a great result.”

The instruments that were beyond repair were recycled with the support of Veolia. Veolia is the UK’s leading resource management company, helping customers and suppliers reduce their carbon footprint, preserve raw materials, and go greener. The recycled materials collected from Sheffield included more than 200kg of metal from brass instruments, and over 900kg of plastic from instrument cases and other parts.

“We’re really excited to continue this partnership with Veoila,” says Jonty. “Knowing that instruments have been recycled gives real peace of mind to hubs. Manufacturing new instruments and delivering them has a carbon cost, so if we can reduce that in any way, it makes procurement more sustainable, and better value.”

Gillian Hume, Music Hub Manager at Sheffield Music Hub, said “Partnership with pBone Music has unlocked so many additional benefits for our hub and the musical community in Sheffield. They have supported us at events, sponsored our youth brass band and are helping us recycle our old instrument stock. They have provided regular updates and created a raft of quality content to support our wider aims in South Yorkshire.”

If you would like the pBone Music team to visit your hub and audit your instruments, we’d love to help. Get in touch and we can work together to turn storage stress into a sustainable solution.