How Recycled Plastic Skateboards are Fighting Against Single Use Culture
Picture this:
It’s sunny and 80 degrees outside. Perfect skateboarding weather! You grab your board and head out.
You get to the park and to your astonishment find no kids on scooters there. A smile comes to your face. This day just keeps getting better! You jump on your board and line up to try your favorite trick.
Rolling up to a rail, you pop up and land in a perfect board slide……. CRACK!
Looking down with pain in your heart, your worst fears come true. There is a massive crack right across the center of your board, rendering it virtually unridable.
So what do you do? Most skaters go for the kill shot, stomping right in the center of their board and chucking it in the garbage. Regardless, your day skateboarding is over. You head to the skate shop dejected and hoping that they have some boards in stock.
As an avid skater, trust me when I say there is almost nothing more heartbreaking than breaking a board. It happens to the best boards, regardless if you have been riding your board for 20 minutes or 2 years.
As it turns out, most skateboards only have a lifespan of a few months.
So what options do you have when you break your board? There are several companies you can send your board to that will turn it into rings, keychains and other awesome things, but what then? You still need new board, so your only option to go and get a new one.
Given the recent tragedy regarding your recent skateboard breakage, you want the best of the best.
The best skateboard decks are made of 100% maple, giving them the perfect flexibility to strength ratio. From the eyes of most skaters, they’re perfect.
But are they really?
In any given year, more than 1.5 million skateboards are produced. This translates to more than 3.5 million lbs of wood being used to create them.
This not only directly contributes to deforestation, but it encourages flooding, erosion and greenhouse gases.
So what? It’s just 3 million lbs. There are industries using far more wood than skateboards. What’s the harm?
It’s not the wood that’s the problem, but the single use culture that skateboarding has engrained on us.
Broke your board? Chuck it and get a new one.
More trees, more skateboards, more broken boards.
With the continued growth of skateboarding (there are over 85 million skateboarders worldwide) and its recent inclusion in the Olympics, this is a problem that is only going to get worse.
So what’s the solution?
At the forefront of the fight against single use culture is The Backcountry Swell, which creates skateboards from 100% recycled plastic.
Here at The Backcountry Swell, we are troubled by two things:
First, Single use culture has society consuming enormous amounts of plastic.
Secondly, Skateboarders have bought into single use culture more than any other sporting group.
So we decided to do something about it. As we set out on our journey to reduce plastic pollution, we discovered the single use culture that is plaguing the skateboarding community.
We set out to make boards from 100% recycled plastic, particularly focusing on single use plastics such as straws, bottle caps and containers.
We don’t need to tell you about the extremely negative environmental effects that plastic pollution has on the planet. If you don’t believe us, check out this and this and this.
On our mission to create the perfect recycled skateboard, we discovered something amazing.
These skateboards are strong! With a similar flex and greater strength than maple, riding one is a dream and feels better than a wood skateboard.
Given their increased strength, recycled plastic skateboards typically last 3x as long as traditional wood boards.
Rather than having negative environmental impacts, the impacts of recycled plastic skateboards are all positive.
Each board stops over 3 lbs of plastic from polluting waterways, which has immense positive impacts on wildlife, environmental and even human health.
So lets bring this back to the beginning:
It’s sunny and 80 degrees outside. Perfect skateboarding weather! You grab your board and head out.
This time you’re riding a recycled skateboard. You go up to the rail, pop up and…. CRACK!
Broken boards are going to happen no matter what anyone does! As much as we would love to say that we have a preventative solution to this, we don’t. The only way to avoid a broken board is to stay inside, and not skateboard.
However, we do have a solution to the problem.
The most amazing thing about recycled skateboards is that they can be recycled again… and again… and again.
So you broke your board? Send it back to us and we will turn it into a new one! Our manufacturing process allows for us to recycle boards an infinite amount of times, creating a truly infinite recycling loop.
The world has become incredibly depended on single use items whether it be plastics or skateboards.
Both of these single use cultures have immensely negative environmental impacts ranging from deforestation, to poisoning wildlife.
As part of the human race, we have an obligation to protect our planet. Our generation is coming to a crossroads of building the worlds sustainable future, and green skateboarding is the solution.
Catch our wave at thebackcountryswell.com
