On the Environmental Impact of skateboarding:
My personal opinion is that the material for boards is pretty inconsequential- wood is a renewable resource after all. the subtlety lays in how such a resource is managed or mis-managed.
Supposedly Dwindle makes sure to only use sustainably harvested wood, but I have my doubts.
It would be cool to see a company take on their environmental impact more directly. maybe planting 2 trees for every one tree harvested for their wood? or off setting their carbon in some way. Create zero plastic waste (e.g. PRANA clothing)
really anything modeled on the way Patagonia approaches manufacturing would be cool to see.
Habitat/AWS would be an ideal company to do something like that just based on the name alone and previous environmental gimmicks they've used to sell stuff in the past.
Contests definitely need to take on environmental impact- especially now that skateboarding will be in the olympics- but imagine if SLS or DewTour or whatever became carbon neutral events? that would be quite a statement. not impossible either, look to Radiohead who've already done massive concerts that were entirely carbon neutral. (ok probably not entirely if you consider every minutiae but you get the point). Again, zero plastic waste would be cool.
theres a lot of ways skateboarding as a culture can at least make a statement of intention to take a step away from destroying the earth.
I always thought of "Skate and Destroy" as "Skate and Destroy the culture/civilization that is destroying us"
but if we get down to the nitty gritty, the essence underlaying the whole thing we have to look at materialism- the industry is a blatant driver of consumption, and not just in a utilitarian sense. how many people who buy into skateboarding actually skate? it's a marketed identity that manipulates people into buying shit to fill the hole industrial civilization has left in our souls.
beware of apathy. if you are apathetic it probably means you lack connection. and you'll buy something to make you feel better- which it never really does.
I like this quote from Morris Berman
"much was lost in the transition to modernity: craftmanship, a deep appreciation of beauty, community, silence and, above all, a sense of spiritual purpose."
it points out the fact that having a sense spiritual purpose in somehow integral to the human psyche. we need to recover this sense not just individually but as a culture(western civ. not just sk8 culture)
Has anybody read: Charles Eisenstein's "the More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible" ?
really great examination of the underlying factors for our cultural/environmental crisis
it's kind of like Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael" but less preachy
also "Natural Capitalism" is a really good book with awesome ideas on how to tweak capitalism in a way that isn't environmentally/socially destructive
Cheers all!
Topic: Environmental impact of skateboard gear manufacturing (Read 16609 times)