In Isère, young entrepreneurs transform snowboards into eco-responsible skates

It is in the offices of the ski equipment manufacturer Rossignol that Vincent Gelin and Adrien Guéris met before creating their company Nok Boards. For ten years, these two board sports enthusiasts worked in the Research and Development of brand snowboards. It was there that they became aware of the problems related to the ecological footprint of the sports industry.

The name of their company is directly related to the concept of recycling: “NoK” is the contraction of “Not OK”, a term used to downgrade products with defects. According to the founders of Nok Boards, 1% of waste is generated by production lines, to which must be added unsold products. There are also individual boards which, once abandoned, are thrown away, buried or burned. This is not without environmental consequences because if more “green” solutions are beginning to emerge, most of the boards are stuffed with components from petrochemicals.

To the question “What to do with used or defective snowboards?”, they imagined an answer related to their passion for skiing: transforming them into skateboards for the central part and into small everyday objects such as mirrors, lights , from key holder… from the unused scraps of the snowboard in which we cut the skateboard. The goal is really to reuse materials as much as possible.

Once collected by Vincent and Adrien, the snowboards are studied from every angle: “We look at each snow to determine its mechanical properties, explains Adrien Gueris. What is his arch (Editor’s note: the shape of the board when you lay it flat and look at it in profile), its flex (Editor’s note: the index concerning its rigidity), but also its materials, its decor, its colors. Depending on all that, we will define what type of skateboarding we will do”. If the snow is flexible, it will make a cruiser (the most versatile board) if it is stiff, a longboard (less maneuverable than a cruiser but more suitable for long distances). Once cut out of the snowboard, the future skateboard is sanded down. Three coats of varnish are added, a grip (non-slip) and wheels. In the end, the model that comes out is numbered and turns out to be one of a kind.

All that remains is to test! “It feels like a snowboard, comments in full test Baptiste Gobert, student at Grenoble INP industrial engineering. It’s flexible, different from what I usually use, it turns well, it’s a very pleasant board!”.

The skates are sold between 179 and 299 euros depending on their size on the company’s e-commerce site and in a few stores in Grenoble, Paris and the Basque Country. To date, the brand has “reincarnated” more than 1300 snowboards.