June 2006

Cornishman
Tales from the Tube 2

GREENING THE GREEN ROOM

Sam Bleakley

The green room – inside the tube - is the ultimate destination for every surfer. Lost in liquid, it’s a place where time travel seems possible, sliding in surreal slow motion. But despite our quest to find the green room, surfers are about as environmentally green as a Texan oil garden. We paddle out in our PVC-colour-coordinated-petrochemical-outfit and claim to be clean living! The truth is surfers worldwide consume three quarters of a million toxic, non-sustainable surfboards per year.

Green, clean equipment hasn’t been the norm since the 1920s, when Hawaiians carved alaia and olo boards from redwood trees. Then surfing went totally toxic when climate and culture combined in California and surfing boomed with oil-based chemicals from the aerospace industry. Even the brown-bread-and-sandals-brigade of the Seventies couldn’t find boards that went better than fibreglass and resin. But they got wise: Fuz Bleakley ran Surf Insight magazine with an ecology page, long before Surfers Against Sewage, advocating what surfers could do to keep the sea clean by engaging with local politics. But last year a new dynamic saturated our psyche. Polyurethane board building giant, Clark Foam, was closed down because their product had become too toxic for Californian environmental laws. A new wave of green-minded boards has emerged, with a mega shift towards epoxy, which use 20 less polluting VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds) than sixties style foam and fibreglass.

But no matter how many people switch to hemp and beeswax boards, one long-haul ‘plane journey to hotter tubes puts more carbon dioxide (the major greenhouse gas responsible for global warming) into the air than a family would generate at home in Zennor in three months. Jet travel is the biggest irony in modern surfing. The EcoSurf Project – HYPERLINK "http://www.ecosurfproject.org" www.ecosurfproject.org - has emerged to suggest ways of addressing these environmental contradictions and develop more eco-friendly equipment and attitudes. Combating air travel pollution, they have launched the 'Carbon Neutral Surfer' scheme. Trees draw carbon out of the atmosphere, so planting masses can help balance the carbon dioxide generated by flying. Porthleven legend and tube-riding matador, Dan “Mole” Joel, has become a carbon neutral surfer. For every flight he makes a sponsor pays EcoSurf to plant enough trees to make his net impact on the atmosphere zero.

Other positive movements are happening in West Cornwall, like St Just based UK Soul – HYPERLINK "http://www.uk-soul.com" www.uk-soul.com - who sell 100% green paulownia wood boards and Loose-fit sticks, who plant a tree for every surfboard sold and donate profits to “1% for the Planet”. Sennen board builder Liam Baker uses Homeblown surfboard blanks constructed from foam way more enviro-friendly than the carcinogenic and lethal concoction Clark used. Another breath of fresh air is blowing from Global Boarders – HYPERLINK "http://www.globalboarders.com" www.globalboarders.com - who are pioneering sustainable surf tourism.

Don’t rely on high tide to wash away your footprint. The environmental clock is ticking, so be carbon cool and we all might enjoy a bit more time in the green room.