At this point, we are a company that is a lot different from what a lot of people think. It’s an arduous process to get where we are to develop each model. We solely construct all the moulds ourselves. There is just a lot more research that goes into developing the shapes for trick boards. We plan on growing it and offering different styles of skateboards. Our whole brand is a niche for surfskates and surf-style skating. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me, Marcelo. She has made some yoga mats, for example. We have partnered with her to source all of our used wheels, with which she can find other products that she can make. We are talking with an awesome woman in the Santa Monica / Venice area who is finding amazing ways to recycle skate wheels. The industry in general has a hard time finding a way to recycle wheels. There is a huge problem with recycling urethane. Are you looking to see if there is a space to repurpose urethane? I ’ve often wondered if there is a way to recycle old wheels. That skateboard is 100% faithful to his shape and design. Then we tweaked it to add the skateboard concaves and then shrunk it down, and cut it on the CNC and built the mould off of that. So we got together with Ryan and we pulled his CNC file that he uses for the Electrical Ninja. We plan on always collaborating with surfers to release the surfskate models. And the other is the 30” (76 cm) surfskate model which is based on Ryan Harris’ Electrical Ninja surfboard. One is a 24” (60 cm) mini-cruiser, called the Sprat. How many models are you going to be releasing as you launch the brand this Earth Day 2021? We had one run over by a car going 30 miles an hour, and it didn’t snap. Since we have been building prototypes, we haven’t had one break. People think, ‘If it’s built like a surfboard does it have the same fragility as one?’ One thing we like to note is the strength of the boards. We always get questions about the longevity of the boards. Since the boards are developed like surfboards, how durable are they? They are built like surfboards in the sense that they have foam cores that are wrapped in fibreglass and injected with resin. The core is lightweight, extremely impact resistant, and we use that, wrapped in fibreglass, to make the ‘guts’ of our boards. There are zero virgin materials that go into making the cores, which are 100% recycled. We are using a mix of virgin and recycled materials. What are the logistics of the manufacturing process? It eats it up and turns it into raw, shredded materials that we use to build the core for our skateboards. We have a huge granulator that we put that waste through. The waste is foam, fibreglass, excess resin that drips on the floor, stir sticks, sandpaper and tape. In terms of surfboard waste, every shortboard that is up to six feet long produces 6-10 pounds of waste.
![shred company shred company](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/76/04/46/7604462114e483cac016e76bb1a2706a.jpg)
Tell me some facts others might not know about surfboard production waste. They are extremely high-quality products that are tied to the surf industry. Tying all those things together is what led to us making the skateboards.
![shred company shred company](https://www.shredstation.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/truck-the-forum-3.png)
The end goal is to eliminate waste from the surfboard manufacturing side but for the amount of waste we produce, we have to make a product that is going to be easy to manufacture and upscale. Once you add the time spent building a product, it becomes impossible to sell at an affordable price. Surfboards are extremely laborious to build. So I thought, ‘What other products can we create from all this waste?’ Then the idea came to make a skateboard deck using the recycled materials. The waste can be turned into useful products. There are a bunch of byproducts of the surfboard manufacturing process. I saw Ryan’s approach to sustainability in terms of his line of work. What was the motivation behind starting Shred?Įarth Technologies is fully dedicated to building the most sustainable surfboards possible.
![shred company shred company](https://www.shrednations.com/directory/img/cont_images/6740/photo_DePereWI54115PackandShip.jpg)
After conducting this interview over the phone, he invited me down to Torrance, California, where I got to see the birthplace of his new venture, Shred Skateboard Co. As an experienced surfboard laminator at Ryan Harris’ Earth Technologies, Gagliardi developed an idea with his business partner, Justin Dechant, to repurpose the waste lying around the shaping bay.
![shred company shred company](https://patch.com/img/cdn/users/54208/2012/10/raw/edc9ec5ebfb66fbb4133265338a7ab38.jpg)
So, naturally, I was intrigued when I heard about Marcelo Gagliardi crafting skateboards with recycled materials. Multiply that by skaters worldwide and you’ve got a staggering amount of virgin maple. I’ve wondered how many felled trees were cut into the countless skateboards I have ridden over twenty-plus years. Photos: Elliott Wright and/or Jason Madison At a time when conversations around carbon footprints arise every day, I have often reflected on my own impact on the environment.