There has been a lot of chatter on the various wake/skate/snow/surfing magazines lately about going green. Also, some lively debates about damaging the Earth with our sports. Mikey T and I are realists when it comes to the environment: we know that running our Nautique and Waverunner, and building our boards out of the finest woods isn’t helping the planet any. BUT we do a whole lot to make up for it. Thanks to Alliance, pretty much everyone knows we run our team van on waste vegetable oil (94,000 miles so far), but we do much more here at Oak. We have completely localized our operation: all facets of our boards are produced within 90 miles of our main office minimizing the amount of fuel it takes to transport the raw and finished materials. We use the most environmentally friendly glues and sealants possible without affecting the integrity of our boards. We also minimize packaging to lessen the landfill burden. I think it would be great if you could some how post these simple steps to producing a “greener” wakeskate, so every manufacturer could adopt these practices.

Oh yeah, there is one more thing we do at Oak. We started the Piedmont Triad’s (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point) first biodiesel refinery last year. We were producing 200,000 gallons of biodegradable fuel annually. That wasn’t nearly enough though, so in a partnership with Board Paradise we have upgraded our refinery to produce up to three million gallons of biodiesel a year. I think that should make up for the gas we burn in the boat.