There are a whole bunch of reasons why a forest gets cut down. Your sweet hardwood floor? Came from a forest. That paper you’re writing on? Yup, forest. Your sweet Brio trainset? That too.

So, cutting down trees is a necessary thing for us to live; especially for things like making houses. But that doesn’t mean cutting down forests is a very desirable thing. Forests do a lot of good things for us: they provide the world with oxygen, are significant carbon sinks (and clean the air in other ways too), are home to a lot of unique and fragile biodiversity, they prevent soil erosion and improve soil quality and finally (and maybe most importantly) they’re great for making tree forts. So the more forest we cut down, the less of this sweet stuff we get. Kind of a bummer right?

A lot of people quite a while ago realized what a bummer this is, and decided to plant a lot of trees, which is a really great thing. But unfortunately, as a planet we still aren’t planting them fast enough. But we’re getting better; we did a better job this past decade than we did the decade before of planting trees. And using bamboo instead of traditional wood helps too, because bamboo grows back from its shoot on its own; usually really quickly.

So, as you can see, even though we’re improving, we’re actually doing alarmingly bad. But everyone can do their part; encouraging tree planting campaigns and being really conscious of what you’re buying is a good idea (for example a bamboo deck does much less harm than a maple one). Anyways, if we can turn this trend around, we can help our planet, our health and our economies a lot.

Also, Janell smells.

See you next week!

This first one is an easy one: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It’s a giant area (anywhere between the size of Texas and the size of the US) in the Pacific Ocean filled with garbage: specifically, tiny pieces of non-degradable pieces of plastic. Because of how currents move in the ocean, most of these plastics are concentrated into one area (the size of Texas) and create a giant glump of garbage in the middle of the ocean. (That’s a bad thing)

Where does the plastic come from? Well, anywhere really. Most plastic doesn’t decompose. When we’re finished with something plastic (a grocery bag, a coffee cup, a telephone, whatever) usually one of four things happen to it: 1. It gets thrown away and sent to a garbage dump where it will wait for a couple of hundred years to break down 2. It will be recycled 3. It gets littered somewhere (more or less the same as the first) or 4. It ends up in Water.

#4 is a lot more common than you’d expect (or at least I expected). A lot of plastic litter ends up in waterways as litter that got swept to sea by rain or wind. A lot of it is gets dumped there deliberately (because its easy to dump in the ocean).

What’s nice about this environmental disaster, is that there’s a lot an ordinary person can do really easily to help: and that’s just trying to avoid plastic as much as possible: bring bag when you go shopping, pick products with less packaging, etc. And what’s great is that a lot of people are already doing all this.

Anyways, I highly recommend watching Vice Magazine’s Garbage Island documentary from 2007. They do a really good job of showing what’s going on without being high-minded assholes (though they are sort of just regular assholes). Enjoy!

I think right now we’re right around half way through our internship here. This last half has cruised by, and I’m excited to see what the next half brings; hopefully a world draped  in bamboo decks.

We’ve been talking a lot about art here lately; our new deck graphic, our graphic design contest; and just what a dope canvas a bamboo skateboard makes for art.

Anyways, that’s what’s on my mind these days. If you’re in the mood for watching something lifechanging about creativity check this out… education is where you find it…

These are exciting times. A couple of us went down to walk around what has been called “ASR Lite” this week and took away some mixed feelings. Even though it felt like the event itself was on life support, our decks were turning heads while we were just walking around. It feels like there’s a wave of bamboo fever about to crash on the skate scene about our cleaner, better and just plain gorgeous decks.

But the coolest thing in San Diego this week wasn’t the (lusterless) glitz and glam inside the ASR; it was what was going on accross the parking lot at the Crossroads show; all sorts of people who just dig skating were slamming it. There was a little girl, who was maybe 2 and a half feet tall shredding it with the big boys. It was nice to just see skaters getting off on skating.

Anyways world, here at BambooSK8 we’re changing the face of the skating world one deck at a time. We’re in the proccess of getting our boards under some riders and people are digging it.

They say you can’t draw water from stone, so we’re liquifying; I suggest buying a boat, ’cause we’re gonna flood.

If you’re in the area, I suggest getting out your bamboo board and cruising on down. Remember, the best weapon in the battle for sustainability is knowledge.

Learn yourself!

Just landed here on Industry St. and am stoaked to get my hands dirty in the world of skateboard manufacturing. I got a mean green streak and there’s a strong environmental vibe going on around here, so I’m excited about that. I’m just getting my bearings so not much to report, except that the water is warm and I’m excited to dive in.

Winter is a wonderful season.