Green Foam Blanks
April 05 2009 | Surf Protection, Sustainable Surf Gear,
by Mark Rauscher
The guys at
Green Foam Blanks have worked out a very innovative way to reduce some of the waste coming out of the surfboard industry. They collect foam shavings from shapers and re-introduce the shavings into the raw material mix to make new blanks, using a proprietary formula. These new "recycled" blanks come out essentially the same as traditional PU blanks but with some cool specks from the bits of stringer that are mixed in with the collected shavings. Matt Biolas with ...Lost is shaping with them and even getting his team riders on the boards. They hooked us up with a blank and I'll start into the building process for that board in the next post.
Joey and Steve, who run Green Foam, also formed
Resurf which aims to keep old surfboards and the waste from the board building industry out of landfills. To do this they are working with local waste collection agencies and shaping factories to redirect the surfboard wastestream away from the landfill into a other uses. It turns out that the materials that surfboards are made out of can be very easily incorporated into asphalt for new roads.
There are already laws on the books that require the recycling of old asphalt and concrete from construction sites, and those materials are collected in a special area of the landfill. Old boards and shaping room foam can simply be added to those collections so they end up getting ground up and reused in the next road construction project. Joey and Steve are working with the local Waste Management agency to develop guidelines so that this process can be replicated throughout the country, and we fully support them in this effort!
