Sure, you’re a good Pacific Northwesterner because you recycle your beer cans, cardboard boxes and plastic milk jugs. But what about that dust-collecting piano you have long wanted to unload? It doesn’t fit into the recycling bin. Creative upcycling might be the answer.
A group of friends in Olympia is starting an off-beat enterprise to tear apart and recycle pianos after noticing how online marketplaces are awash in pianos that aren’t selling at any price.
“It’s just fallen out of fashion to have your kids learn that particular instrument,” observed Michael Rohde, the group’s leader. “There are all sorts of keyboards that are much cheaper and more appropriate for the type of music that kids are probably interested in anyway.”
On the Tuesday before Christmas, the semi-retired, self-described tinkerer and woodworker set about with his three collaborators, all in their 60s and 70s,…
