Narrator: Two brothers are turning busted skateboards
into furniture and bowls.
Adrian and Martinus Pool
have been skating the streets of Alberta, Canada,
for more than 20 years.
They've now turned that hobby into a thriving business.
Martinus: At the beginning, we were only building
from the material that we were able to scrounge up
through dumpster diving outside construction sites,
and then also the skateboards.
Narrator: About 2 million skateboards
end up in landfills every year.
After working in construction,
the Pool brothers have spent the past decade
upcycling thousands of those boards
into earrings, coffee tables, and their signature bowls.
Martinus: Seeing just the amount of material
that gets thrown out on construction sites
is pretty alarming.
That's something that we factor into
our approach with our work.
Narrator: We went to Calgary to see how their company,
AdrianMartinus, is making homeware out of worldwide waste.
Skateboards are made out of maple wood
that goes through a special treatment
allowing it to be peeled into thin sheets.
Each board, or deck, has about seven layers
of those sheets glued together.
That makes deconstructing the boards a bit tricky.
Martinus: They're extremely hard on equipment,
mainly because they are made out
of hard maple and then a lot of glue.
Narrator: But the quality of wood leads to durable products.
Martinus: The skateboards are the nicest plywood that is made,
because it's solid maple the whole way through.
Narrator: And in Calgary, with about a dozen public skate parks,
there are plenty of boards available.
Kevin: I think the community in Calgary is really strong.
It's really growing.
Narrator: Martinus picks broken boards up
from local skate shops every week.
Martinus: We'll also get calls from moms when they see our work,
and they'll be like, "I've got my son's boards
in the garage, and I'm going to throw them out.
Come get them."
Narrator: The brothers usually get about 55 boards a month
from store owners like Kevin
and bring them back to their workshop.
Adrian and Martinus worked as carpenters
for a combined nine years,
and they were bothered by the amount of waste they saw.
Martinus: The leftovers from a hardwood flooring job
are getting thrown out,
because you can't fold those back into a different job.
So now basically anything
that's 2 inches by up to 8 inches
is something that we can use in our process.
Narrator: After a few years in construction,
the brothers switched to finer work,
installing cabinets, windows, and doors.
That's when they discovered the unique qualities
of building with upcycled boards.
It started as a hobby with boards donated by their friends.
Martinus: The first project that we really discovered
that we could do, the material is,
like the possibility with it is pretty endless,
is that we made some baseball bats.
Narrator: Adrian's wife joined them in 2014 and began experimenting
with other ways to use the boards like jewelry.
The first step is to remove the grip tape.
Martinus: Ideally, we like to do it in the summer on a hot day,
and we just leave the boards out in the sun
for half an hour, and that heats up the glue enough
so that you can peel them off.
The next step is getting the boards back down
to just bare wood.
We have to remove the clear coat
that you can see on the top,
as well as the graphic and anything left on them
so that the glue can adhere properly.
We butcher them into all their congruent parts.
Narrator: These strips might become earrings, tables, credenzas,
or in this case, a bowl.
To make a bowl,
Martinus stacks and glues tails and noses together.
Martinus: Each bowl takes 20 of these nose and tail sections.
I start looking at them based upon the size
and how much curve they are.
And then I'll sort of start
with one that looks extra big,
make sure that they line up and they look congruent
so that they'll laminate together well.
So this is basically the layout
of the how the bowl's going to look
and what the colors are going to be in it.
Narrator: The boards are clamped together for 24 hours
and left to cure for a couple more days after that.
Martinus: And then the corners are cut off on the band saw.
And after that's done, they're mounted on the lathe.
Narrator: Then he shapes and hollows out the block of boards
using skew chisels, bowl gouges and scrapers.
Martinus makes bowls in batches of about 15,
each batch taking two to three weeks.
Board manufacturers use different veneers
and dyes on each deck, which makes every one
of the Pool brothers' products unique.
Martinus makes about 70 bowls a year,
and they sell for almost $400 each,
about four times the price of a new skateboard.
And it turns out people love watching them take shape.
The company relies mainly
on Instagram and TikTok for promotion.
Martinus: Social media is essential for this company.
Instagram is basically what allowed us
to have this business and continue going as we have.
Narrator: For decades, skaters have faced
all kinds of negative stereotypes.
In films and television,
they're often portrayed as slackers and delinquents.
But the sport has earned respect over time
and had its first Olympic appearance in 2021.
Tony Hawk: Luckily, skateboarding got to go through this growth cycle
so that skateboarding now is as big as any Olympic sport
and has big, mainstream sponsors, has huge events.
Narrator: Now, generations of skaters
who grew up playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
are starting to give back.
Skaters like Ryan Flynn, whose online store Chops
is also turning old boards into new products.
Ryan: We like functional works of our functional products.
Anything from sunglasses to pool cues to screwdrivers.
We like them to be used.
We like them to have a real second life.
Narrator: He says perceptions have changed since he started skating.
Ryan: My mom told me way later in life,
she's like, "My friends told me
to make sure you don't skateboard,
and try to get that out of his hands,
because he's going to turn out to be a loser."
I'm so thankful she never listened to them.
Narrator: Ryan hopes his products will push others
to think more about the environment.
Ryan: Even though we appreciate recycling,
and it's something we've grown into,
it's trickled down to other parts of our lives, too, right?
It's like we're more conscious.
Narrator: Likewise, the Pool brothers believe their efforts
will get skaters to consider what happens
after they're done with their boards.
Martinus: I think we definitely inspire people
to get into woodworking or try to recycle skateboards
or that sort of stuff.
Hi, this is Will Storey from the Worldwide Waste team.
Over the past year,
we've looked at bricks made out of plastic in Kenya,
tiles made out of smog in India
and mats made out of human hair
used to clean up oil spills in San Francisco.
We want to bring you more stories
that take a look at garbage
and creative ways people deal with it.
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