Sustainability & Environmental Responsibility

We refuse to make products at the expense of the environment, that's why we've created high-quality eco-alternatives to replace unsustainable products that we use every day. You may have noticed a trend lately.. In the past few decades (or longer), manufacturers have started to make very disposable products out of relatively permanent materials. For example: Plastic Water Bottles. It takes, on average, 5 minutes to drink a bottle of water, which then takes, on average, 500 years to decompose (and oftentimes ends up in our oceans). That's exactly what we are fighting against as a brand and here are a few ways that we do it..

Limiting our Waste

A great way to create less waste is to use less stuff. We do that a number a ways..

Re-purposed boxes & recycled packing material: It is the case with most manufacturers that many used shipping boxes arrive in great condition.. we just reuse them. If someone gave you a mint-condition bike that had been ridden once, would you throw it away? Nah. We do the same with packing materials. If we need to use new stuff, we use recycled Kraft paper but we generally use a mixture of Kraft paper and packing foam sheets, bubble wrap, etc. that we have gathered. (Rest assured that it is all clean.)

Minimalist Shipping - Shipping efficiently makes sense for everyone. Less box volume means fewer trucks/planes. Small boxes means cheaper shipping. We have recently replaced our Long Mounting Bar with 2 Short Mounting Bars, this gives customers more control over how far apart they mount their cradles and has shrunken our box size by almost 40%.

Biodegradable Hardware Bags - They look like plastic. They feel like plastic. They... are 100% recyclable and will biodegrade when you put them in the ground. 

Bamboo Spacers - Our entire Mounting System relies on our spacers and Mounting Bar, we engineered it that way. However when we launched the brand we were using small plastic spacers. This one was a no-brainer, our spacers are now more stable and are made of bamboo that would otherwise be unusable scrap material..

Grassracks' "Zero Waste" Initiative

After we manufacture our products, we are left with some 'drop' pieces of perfectly good material. In an effort to get our waste as close to zero as possible, we have begun to use these drop pieces in a few different ways. 

1. Oddly-Shapped Cutting Boards - The nature of our designs leave us with some funky looking drop pieces which lend themselves to some even funkier looking cutting/display boards. Our bamboo cutting boards can be found in shops and arts festivals around Malvern, PA all summer. Waste is used, people love them, everyone wins. 

2. Bodhi Life - Much of our scrap is taken by Bodhi Life and made into awesome, wearable accessories like rings, bow ties, and more. We were always quite taken with bamboo but Bodhi has gone above and beyond to show us just how amazing this material really is (and their mission to save the world is pretty great, too). Bodhi also turns some scrap pieces into gorgeous handcrafted wall art and home decor to commemorate some of the greatest animals and places that define our planet. 

3. Nubbins - Oh yes, our Nubbins. At first a way to use up pieces of bamboo that were too small for the rest of our racks, our Nubbins have quickly become a customer favorite and an incredibly low profile, minimalistic way to store skis, snowboards, and almost anything that can hang.