Bamboo Skateboards reduces skating’s impact on the environment....

Photo courtesy of Bamboo Skateboards

For the altruistic company, staying true to the mantra of reducing environmental impact while remaining sustainable is a constant struggle. Often green companies have to deal with premium materials and expensive production costs, while sales don’t compare to bigger competitors’—a frustrating and often damning business reality.
Bamboo Skateboards is one of those companies. Creating skate decks that are made 100 percent out of bamboo, the Southern California company competes in the dog-eat-dog skate industry, where a majority of the manufacturers use less sustainable maple wood for their decks. However, Bamboo Skateboards has found a way to survive and is starting to thrive thanks to its quality product (bamboo wood has actually performed better than maple in tests) and the slow acceptance of the material as a viable skate option. All the while Bamboo Skateboards has remained true to its green roots, harvesting materials from managed bamboo forests and donating portions of profits to help at-risk youth learn to skate. We caught up with Bamboo Skateboards marketing director Mark Olson to learn more about the company and how it’s changing perceptions in the skate world while teaching the world to “skate green.”
Why did you guys go into ecologically sustainable products? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to do it “the other way”?
We have a parent company (Bamboo Buddy) that makes a lot of different products out of bamboo, so we were familiar with it. We started working with skateboards and testing in 2007 and the bamboo boards actually performed better than maple. We knew that we had a more sustainable product, but now we had a better performing product.
So why bamboo?
According to the Science Channel, skateboard manufacturing is the No. 1 cause for maple deforestation in North America. Bamboo is a grass, it grows in abundance, and it gives off 30 percent more oxygen than maple, so that’s a lot of difference. Plus it’s stronger, so it’s an easy choice.
What has been the most difficult part about running a “green business”?
I would say balancing between being a performance skateboard company with a quality product and building a sustainable product. We started out pushing our sustainable, eco-friendly skateboards and we quickly realized that in the 2008 skateboard industry that that wasn’t a huge deal. Now skateboarding is going that route; there are other companies coming out with bamboo boards now. One of the hardest parts is breaking into an industry that’s been based on maple boards, so we had to change the industry over to a different building process, which is a challenge.

Bamboo Skateboards makes longboards as well as normal skate decks. Photo courtesy of Bamboo Skateboards

You’re based in San Diego, and Southern California is the skate capital of the world. Has this been a good or bad fit for you guys?
I think that with the people we know, that yes, it’s a help. It would be much harder to be a skateboarding company and not be in Southern California. It’s easy to partner up with other skate companies, as well. We got into the longboard market a few years ago and partnered with Tracker for all our longboard trucks, different things like that.
Are there other ways you guys reduce your environmental impact?
Certainly. One of the majority owners has the second-largest solar panel-powered residency in the San Diego area. Then we use about 98 percent reclaimed furniture, and we use all our shredded paper for packing material. There’s a whole lot of different aspects that we look at to make less of a negative environmental impact. We even decided against an AC unit in the offices. We’re not a nonprofit, but we’re not just building a sustainable line of skateboards either.
Explain a little bit about the new Indiegogo project you guys have going on.
We’re at the point where we want to get to that next level, so we started a crowd funding campaign to hopefully extend our product line and build the awareness of our company and what we’re doing in the action sports world. There’s a lot of bigger companies out there advertising in large magazines and sponsoring large events, and we want to compete on that level.
What’s the future of Bamboo Skateboards?
We want to still be considered that sustainable skateboard company, so I don’t see us being a massive company, but who knows? But when it comes to sustainable skateboarding and bamboo as a manufacturing material, we want to be what you think about. When it comes to going green and skating green, we want to be what you think about. We want to be the driving force for that movement.