How Do You Make a Skateboard Out of Trash? | Short Film Showcase

My name is Mac Primo. I'm an artist, director, stuff maker. I was contacted by the World Wildlife Fund; it's here for Earth Hour. They asked 15 artists from around the world to take stuff that already exists, repurpose it, give it a new life. That's pretty much what I do for everything.

So, I rephrased the challenge in my brain. I thought, "What do I give a about, and can that be made out of trash?" And like one second after, I was on the phone with Doc.

Mm-hmm. My name is Don Sanford. I am a home builder, carpenter, woodworker. My eldest daughter had a birthday. I want to buy her a skateboard. I went to this local skate shop, and the kid working there was like, "Check this out." I just locked in with them immediately; I just thought they were the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Would you remember when we bought your skateboard? Yes. What kind of board was it? Do you remember? Do you like riding it? Yes. There you go! And then I was like, “I got to figure out who these people are.”

They're four shapes; it's myself, my wife, my nephews, and all their friends that create handcrafted cruiser skateboards. So fast forward a year and a half, all Don Jose, dude. A year ago, I bought a board; I love it. I ride it every day. Do you want for me?

Gil makes a board out of trash. Don was like, “I have to think about that for a few days.” He drove to the next job site, up to the stack of six or eight buckets all piled one on another, and all of a sudden, I'm like, "Whoa, that’s it! Interesting."

Leave my mathematical mind going to work; a diameter of that bucket is about 12 inches. How's that by pi? We know we had two old paint buckets, cut off and flattened out, and put some old wood and put it through the bandsaw. Move it in and put it together, clamp it down, and pop it out, and actually work.

Buckets, there are thousands of them on every job site, throwaways, and this stuff goes in the earth, and it stays there forever. As a home builder, it always bothered me how much material went to waste. So the concept of taking stuff out of the landfill, giving it a second life, it's just fascinating.

Now, we're thinking, like, what if we can make this stuff and give them to people who need them? There's no material cost, and these things are free. All I have to do is fill them, and now there's something for someone who otherwise wouldn't have had it.

That thing is now a tool for empowerment, a tool for self-expression. Win-win-win all the way around! Like when I got a skateboard when I was a kid, I didn't just learn how to roll; I learned how to express myself.

For a while in my life, a curb was just a curb. Then suddenly, a curb was an opportunity, and that changed the way I saw the world. Once there was trash, now there's a skateboard. It warms my heart to think of that. If I can play some small role in making that transference, I can't think of anything better to do: make skateboards.