SURFING GOES GREEN
The Ecoboard Project is developing the world’s first eco windsurf boards made out of recycled and biodegradable material and Balsa wood.
1. UP AND AWAY
Ecoboard Project ambassador and professional windsurfer Florian Jung from Germany tests the world’s first eco windsurf board in Cape Town earlier this year.
2. SHAPING UP
Jung measures the eco windsurfboard in a board-shaping bay in Cape Town. Eco windsurf boards are produced in Thailand by board-maker Starboard.
3. WASHED ASHORE
A Senegalese boy walks on a beach strewn with plastic bottles in the village of Ngor. Plastic waste from the ocean is used in ecoboards. Sea-conscious surfboard manufacturers are looking to ecoboards as an alternate to the conventional, non-biodegradable waste-producing board-making process.
4. CLIMATE WARRIOR
Jung in the ocean. Starboard’s goal is to reduce the carbon footprint of board manufacture. For each board shipped, Starboard plants one mangrove in the Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park in Myanmar, absorbing up to a ton of carbon dioxide over 20 years.
5. FLYING HIGH
The Balsa wood used for the eco windsurf board is sourced from Ecuador and is used as a sandwich material to replace conventional PVC for maximum strength and rigidity, at a tenth of the footprint of PVC.
6. BALSA IS BETTER
Jung examines a board incorporating Balsa wood. Balsas are the fastest-growing trees in the world, and the wood offers better mechanical properties than PVC for the same density. This translates into high impact and fatigue resistance.
7. NOW THAT WAS FUN
According to Jung: ‘It’s a great challenge to create more environmental products that work better than conventional windsurf boards. We have to make a choice for a cleaner ocean and a healthier planet.’
8. LABOUR OF LOVE
A surfboard shaper shaves foam from a surfboard ‘blank’ as he shapes a board.
9. FINAL TOUCHES
A surfboard glasser applies fibreglass and resin to a new surfboard in a board factory in Cape Town.
10. UPSIDE DOWN
Jung adds: ‘For us surfers the ocean is a good teacher and every wave comes with a lesson to adapt in the best possible way. As long as we treat everything around us with respect, we will see the beauty. Otherwise we will feel the forces of nature firsthand.’