Jon Blank is a skater. Not an ice skater, but a skateboarder. Growing up in the Washington D.C. metro area, he explains, skateboarding made him a bit of an outcast, since it was not as widely accepted then, but upon moving to New York City for college he felt right at home on the city streets, which are “great for street skating,” Jon says. “Finding obstacles in the street is what’s so fun about skating in New York.” His passion for skating led him to volunteer to help build Green Skate Lab, the first free public skatepark in Washington D.C. and a leading example of alternative, eco-friendly construction and design. Based off African mud-hut building techniques, the park was built almost entirely out of recycled materials (the only non-recycled materials were the rebar and concrete) including salvaged tires from the Anacostia River in Washington D.C.