As part of Spring Guitar-A-Thon 2022, and in celebration of Earth Day, Guitar Center, the world’s largest musical instrument retailer, is partnering with D’Addario for a special event. From April 14 through May 4, at Guitar Center locations nationwide, any musician bringing in a guitar for a Platinum Setup will receive complimentary D’Addario premium replacement strings – either XS (electric/acoustic) or NYXL (bass) strings – as part of the guitar tune-up, with the old strings being recycled.
This event is part of D’Addario’s Playback, the world’s first-string recycling program, as well as Guitar Center’s year-round string recycling initiative, which has seen more than 1.9 million strings recycled since the program’s inception – approximately 543,484 strings recycled in 2021 alone.
These efforts are accomplished with the help of global recycling organization TerraCycle, which specializes in handling hard-to-recycle materials. As musical instrument strings are not recyclable through local municipal recycling programs, an estimated 1.5 million pounds of instrument string metal is landfilled each year – material that could be recycled thanks to specialized organizations like TerraCycle.
“We have run Earth Day Weekend string recycling/replacement events in past years, and this year we decided to expand it through all of our Spring Guitar-A-Thon to give more musicians a chance to participate,” stated Neil Potter, Guitar Center Director of Rentals and Repairs. “We thank everyone who continues to turn to their local Guitar Center locations for recycling their used strings all year long, and we thank D’Addario and TerraCycle for their role in this event. Recycling is always the right choice ecologically, and we encourage all guitarists to choose this option to do their part to help our planet. We are looking forward to serving our customers with Platinum Setups and new premium strings from D’Addario this Guitar-A-Thon.
