Green is the new Black: Part 2
Green skateboards and now green skateparks? In Portland there are two new skateparks breaking ground in 2008. Both proposals mentioned a need to minimize the environmental impact, mostly concentrating on water runoff. Seems like a minor part of the project to me, as none of these parks are located near waterways. But what do I know? I’m not one of those science doohickeys. Coincidentally, Airspeed Skateparks has the contract for one of those new parks and they are also featured in the newest issue of Concrete Wave Magazine. The article titled The New
Cooldown – Skate Green: Design and Build Smart is available as a PDF download. There’s more to this green skatepark than you might imagine. Aside from skateparks the article also talks about sustainability in skateboards, clothing and shoes.
– Thanks to Don Whitaker for the tip.
Thats so 2003
http://www.eastcoastaholic.com/greenskatelab.htm
Almost included it. Already covered it. Their web site (greenskatelab.org) is gone now.
Some of this stuff looks legit and I’d like to support those companies that are sincere in their approach to lessening their footprint; some of the other stuff reads like greenwashing or hippy-dippy stuff that has no measureable benefit if any.
Concrete parks are the way to go, but the material dumps lots of CO2 into the environment and is a hard one to live down regardless of what steps are taken. It seems that focusing on other components of skatepark construction offer more promise. For example, can some of the wood used as stakes, forms, & frames be saved and reused on future park projects? This could have a significant cost savings as well as saving natural resources and landfill space. Maybe some of that wood could come from a salvage source to begin with. The Green Skate Lab is a great example of moving garbage up the food chain!
Outside of the park construction materials and process, there are ways to mitigate the nasty stuff like hosting skate events at your new park and directing the money towards a revegetation or water conservation effort, etc. Rewarding significant donors with a sappling for their yard instead of a brick with their name might be another way. Canceling the X-Games entirely…
What about burying nuclear waste containment units inside the concrete backfill?
Or, harvesting the hot air from all the trash-talkers and remember-when-ers standing on the deck to drive wind turbines.
Or… magnetically charged trucks hangers with capacitors to harvest the electrical field energy created when kickflipping.
Or those old flip down bike generators that are used to power lights (that made it really hard to pedal) hooked up to your skateboard wheels.