Extreme Sports Going Green

Hello Readers,

I recently was thinking about a trip that my family and I are taking to Aspen, Colorado for Christmas and how excited I was to get to snowboard. I started to think if extreme sports like snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing are doing anything to go green. I found a very interesting article by the Washington Post called "Greening the Gear," and it talked about that very issue.

This article, by Kathleen Horn was very interesting because it talked about how sporting good companies have a tough test to try and convince buyers that their products are really green and worth the money. Before I talk about the different products that are available there were a couple of facts that I thought I would pass along that I did not not before reading this article.

1) According to the Horn article, Frank Scura, the co-founder and executive director of the Action Sports Environmental Coalition helped make green the "X Games." X Games is a extreme sporting events where athletes compete on winter and summer sports such as snowboarding in the winter and skateboarding in the summer. According to the article, Scura "encouraged skateboard ramps to be built out of Forest Stewardship Council-certified lumber."

2) Also Scura wants there to be a green stamp placed on items that would guarantee that all products meets the ASEC guidelines. I think both of these ideas were fantastic ideas and it is nice to see sports making a effort to help the environment.

Back to the article by Horn, the first product that Horn introduces is the surfboard. She talks about the old surfboard were made of materials that were harmful to the environment. For example, Horn said that the old boards were made of, "toluene diisocyanate and then coated with polyester resins and both are considered harmful to the environment and to the workers to handle them." The new surfboards are created with "epoxy resins, natural composites" that are less harmful.

The next product were rubber balls. According to Horn, most traditional rubber balls are made of "synthetic leather outer shell and a rubber air bladder. Aggressive harvesting of leather can deplete the forest," according to Horn's article. There is a company called "Fair Trade Sports" and they make rubber balls with FSC-certified rubber. "FSC certification means the product is from a responsibly managed forest, as dictated by international rules," according to Horn. Scott James, founder of Fair Trade Sports offers soccer balls, volleyballs, footballs and basketballs and all of them are FSC certified.

Skateboards was the next product and I never thought about skaters breaking the boards a lot and because of that trees must died to keep this sport as popular as it is. Now there are eco-friendly boards that are made out of bamboo and hemp fiberglass. The one problem about this method is bamboo is not cheap and just like everything else, there isn't an endless supply of bamboo.

The last product I will talk about is snowboards. Companies like Venute Snowboards and Arbor are using "harvested wood, bamboo and organic cotton and hemp to create these boards. There was a quote that was interesting about snowboards that I want to share with you; "For example, Arbor's marketing manager, Jessica Ng, says bamboo is "lighter, more responsive and more durable" than wood, plus it offers "more pop . . . [or] liveliness to the board" when making jumps," according to the Horn article.

I highly encourage everyone to take a look at the article by Kathleen Horn, there are some cool pictures of the products. Click here to access the article.

I was very happy to see that sports that are becoming so popular are making a effort to be more environmental friendly. I actually need a new snowboard for my trip in a couple of months and I think I might consider buying one that is "green."