The 1st Annual Surfer’s Path Green Wave Awards
Posted on September 01, 2006 @ 2:51 PM
FOR EXCELLENCE AND ACHIEVEMENT IN PROMOTING SUSTAINABILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE SURFING WORLD IN 2005.
Illustration by Rick Rietveld
Sustainability is the name of the game. If it ain’t sustainable, it ain’t viable. That goes for global economic paradigms, and it goes for agricultural practices in our local farmlands. It goes for sustainable relationships in our communities and between employers and workers, and even between nations. And sustainability is the name of the game for surfing, too. Hence our conversion to 100% post-consumer recycled paper and non-GMO soy inks, and these Green Wave Awards.
A simple “call for nominees” last autumn brought a surprisingly large wave of response. We were heartened and humbled by the breadth and depth of the surf community’s commitment to positive change, and were faced with the resulting challenge of sorting through your recommendations in seven categories and coming up with the winners.
Of course, in a game like this, we’re all winners. And all efforts towards sustainability are vitally important. In the end, even with the assistance of the organization SustainAbility, our selections for Green Wave Awards are subjective. We’ve done our best to balance the scale of the effect with the scale of the commitment, the scope of the effort with the purity of the intent. All we can say for sure is that these are our best efforts at making tough choices, and that – because of the efforts of each and every one of these nominees – we are all winners. – Alex Dick-Read & Drew Kampion
SURFBOARD MANUFACTURING COMPANIES
Not an easy one to judge mainly because surfboards aren’t, in any way, eco-friendly. Not yet, anyway. One nominee, blank manufacturer Homeblown, takes a step away from the industry norm by using MDI (methylene diphenyl di-isocyanate) formulas, rather than the more poisonous TDI (toluene di-isocyanate). This means that each blank they produce pollutes the atmosphere less, and it makes Homeblown a much safer environment for its workers than most blank-making operations.
Three nominees are using epoxy resins, instead of the more common polyester resins, to make their boards. Epoxy offers several advantages for board makers: extruded polystyrene foam blanks, required in the epoxy board-building process, emit fewer VOCs (volatile organic compounds) than the usual polyurethane blanks; the resin itself emits roughly 75% fewer VOCs than the usual polyester resin; and epoxy boards tend to be much stronger – proved by Point Blanks’ Fletcher Chouinard after a year of testing different materials – so the boards last longer. Fewer broken boards means less boards get made and fewer end up on landfills.
All of these moves are praiseworthy. To some degree they all offer boards that are slightly less damaging to the environment. But in the end, all of the above represent ‘least worst’ options. MDI blanks are still toxic, just less toxic than TDI blanks, and epoxy boards, though tougher and slightly less damaging, are still polluters. So we settled on a board maker that, while tiny in scale, demonstrates active effort towards offering us not ‘least worst’ but ‘excellent’ options.
WINNER: OCEAN GREEN SURFBOARDS
“The ultimate goal of Ocean Green is to produce custom surfboards ... made entirely from natural materials.” Ocean Green, in Cornwall, UK, stands out for the central role it gives to this important quest. They “aim to replace each of the surfboard’s three base materials with an environmentally-friendly alternative that has equal or better qualities for the job.” So far, they can cover two of the three bases. Their Ecofoil boards replace foam blanks with sustainably-grown hollow balsa blanks, and all their boards are glassed with organically-grown hemp cloth.
Balsa, if grown and harvested properly, is clearly a greener surfboard core. Hemp is renewable, biodegradable and, according to OG’s own material tests at the University of Bangor in Wales, “hemp composite … is stronger weight for weight than a fibreglass equivalent.”
So is the future hemp? Should we all be riding balsa? We don’t claim to know, but it’s clear that these guys are offering a greener alternative already, and, as important, they’re demonstrating commitment to a radical, risky approach. These guys are tiny. Imagine if surfing’s biggest companies put the equivalent effort into producing boards “made entirely from natural materials”.
SURF TRAVEL COMPANIES
It’s hard to be green in this scene and while we have heard about ‘eco-surf camps’ in some parts of the world, none were nominated this year. In fact with only two nominees the choice was limited and we toyed with the idea of not giving out an award for this category. We quite liked Errant Surf’s Grom Exchange programme but couldn’t see that, by giving some of the UK’s top young surfers a free trip to one of their destinations, they were really qualifying for a green award.
BoardX, a surf travel company in Belgium that caters for windsurfers and kiters as well, was nominated on the basis that, being an internet-based company, they use no paper for letters, or envelopes, or paper invoices. They also say they only use Terra Wax (surfboard wax made from natural products) in their surf camps. But when we noticed that they are imposing an “Earth Tax” on themselves, and saw that they had already given over €2,000 to the Mentawai Islands health charity SurfAid, we decided they deserved some recognition for their efforts.
WINNER: BOARDX
A surf-travel company that’s really doing something to help people at the other end of the travel experience.
SURF-RELATED MEDIA AND PUBLISHING ENTITIES
This was another category that appeared to be fairly thin. We love the surf-lifestyle magazine Stranger, which is printed on recycled paper, but being local only to surfers in Cornwall, its impact on the surf world as whole was deemed to be limited. Irishsurfer.com is many things, and an admirable site, but didn’t press our ‘green’ buttons. In fact, two stood out from the rest, one of which was Wetsand.com, the surf forecasting site, online shop and information resource. Wetsand.com deserves a mention not just for signing up to the 1% For The Planet scheme (1% of profits go to environmental organizations) but also for its role as an information resource for people wanting to learn more about issues affecting the environment.
WINNER: ECOSURF PROJECT
Actually it is a non-profit organization, but its main incarnation is as a website that works as an online resource for anyone interested in, involved in and concerned about making surfing less damaging to the planet. We hope it will take off. You only need to look at the popular board makers’ website, swaylocks.com to see how useful these kind of online talking shops and information exchanges can be. EcoSurf Project provides news, information and links and as a nonprofit, it also has grants to offer for projects within the industry that will help make us greener. Log on, exchange knowledge, schemes and skills. You never know what may emerge.
Send this article to a friend
ISSUE 66 OUT NOW
