Our Commitment to Sustainability

When you work with materials borrowed from the earth, you learn quickly that one of the most dangerous ideas is the simple phrase, “We’ve always done it this way.”

Tradition has its place. I love the history of guitar-making. The smell of old workshops, the worn jigs, the quiet pride of the builders who shaped the instruments we grew up hearing. But the familiar formula of ebony, Brazilian rosewood, and mahogany comes with a truth that’s harder to romanticize: many of those trees are now endangered, and some are disappearing faster than the craft can adapt.

Once I started digging into the status of the woods we praise, I couldn’t unsee it. Page after page of the CITES and IUCN lists showed species that used to be abundant, now clinging to what’s left of their ecosystems. These are not abstract losses. They’re the forests we lean on every time we pick up an instrument. Ignoring that simply because it makes the build more “traditional” feels like looking away at the exact moment we’re needed most.

Viridis Guitars grew out of that realization. I wanted to build instruments that honour the craft without draining the world that makes the craft possible. So I work with woods that aren’t threatened, and I try to keep plastic out of my guitars whenever I can. A lot of parts get made right here in the shop, and I wind my own pickups partly because I love it, and partly because it keeps my footprint smaller. Finishes are chosen with care, low-VOC, gentler on the air we breathe. None of it is perfect, but it’s honest work, and I keep looking for ways to do better.

How Sustainability Benefits You, the Player

Your music isn’t generic. Your instrument shouldn’t be either.

There’s a beautiful side effect to all this: when you step outside the old recipe, you find materials that are absolutely stunning. Woods with surprising colour, grain that feels alive, tones that bloom in ways the classics never could. Some of these species are more stable, more resonant, more interesting to carve. They’ve been overlooked simply because they weren’t part of the story yet.

And because they aren’t tangled up in scarcity or import restrictions, these woods let me build instruments that don’t carry the weight of inflated costs or travel limitations. You get a guitar with its own voice, a piece of the world that’s still thriving, without needing to pay for the privilege of rarity.

Sustainability isn’t a compromise. It’s an invitation. It lets me give you something more affordable, more unique, and more deeply connected to the living world than any endangered wood ever could.

This whole ethos is more than a business stance. It’s a quiet hope that more musicians and makers start paying attention to the lists that tell us which trees are struggling. When we understand what’s being lost, it becomes impossible not to care.

At Viridis Guitars, I’m trying to show that excellence doesn’t require exploitation. That a guitar can be both deeply crafted and deeply considerate.

Thanks for walking this path with me.