E N VIR O N M E NT / BE TTE R BOAR D S Marumoto has implemented a number of measures including using recycled materials and recycling acetone, but has yet to see anything truly eco-friendly come into the market. “I’m totally into seeing environmentally friendly things because surfboards aren’t the most environmentally friendly materials unfortunately. The main thing that I’ve seen that no one has really been able to master is making something that this company (Be Better Boards) is talking about,” Marumoto says. As a supplier of blanks to the industry, Derek Young says he thinks shapers will be open to the Be Better Foam product and what Larry has to offer. “I’d say definitely if the price is right and the quality was there… that’d be huge, that’d be great.“ Young adds, “Of course if someone could figure out a way to use environmentally friendly materials and the price is on par, then it’s a no-brainer.”
Bertlemann teams up with AIRTeach.
personality in the 1970s, has teamed up with a California-based company to once again influence future generation of surfers. “I have a little product, which is really, really good,” Bertlemann said. “It’s called a green blank, which means the boards I make will not kill our planet.” Blake Ward, chairman of Advanced Innovative Recovery Technologies, Inc. (AIRTech) has been working closely with Bertlemann and his associates in the industry to bring a new, environmentally friendly, high-performance foam blank to the market, with a purposeful push to Hawai’i. “You can imagine how many boards break a day in Hawai’i,” says Ward. “Those boards are toxic. If you look underneath the Pipeline and other places where a lot of boards break and get stuck in the reef, you’ll see that the reef is dead,” Ward continues. “And we did that in our lifetime.” Eric Arakawa adds more insight into a shapers’ opinion of the art of board building: “Almost every single board that gets made around the world ends up going to a landfill. There’s technology out there to reduce the carbon footprint and reduce the toxicity but it costs, and my experience has been that most surfers are very resistant to higher prices.” Arakawa also adds that, “there’s tension in the industry to be responsible, but at the same time there’s the whole performance aspect of it. When it comes to boards, it basically comes down to price and performance.” This sentiment is echoed by other shapers and suppliers who, like Arakawa and Pyzel, support more eco-friendly practices and products, but have yet to see a truly cost-competitive, high performance alternative gain traction in the market. Some have worked with a company called Marko Foam that supplies recycled “enviro-foam” blanks, including Derek Young of Poi Dog Distribution Co. and Bret Marumoto of Bret Boards. Young has participated in the “Waste-to-Waves” where people can drop off old Styrofoam coolers and packaging that can be recycled and repurposed as blanks, but he said “there are lots of cosmetic flaws with that type of material, so it’s hard to justify selling it to someone for the normal price when it doesn’t look that good.”
Since the closure of Clark Foam, which supplied more than 80 percent of the world’s surfboard blanks, most blanks are manufactured overseas where environmental regulations are more lenient. Be Better Boards wants to see that trend reverse and “take it back from the places where they don’t surf,” Blake Ward says. The transition to bring surfboard manufacturing back to its roots in Hawai’i and California would require a safer manufacturing process, something the company is spearheading with their non-toxic foam and environmentally friendly manufacturing process. AIRTech Foam, the parent company of Be Better Boards by Bertlemann, initially formed to develop a material that would help clean up the British Petroleum (BP) Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. By joining with one of the top chemists in the world, AIRTech formulated a new, nontoxic foam made from renewable resources that essentially works like a Sham-wow™ on the ocean, absorbing oil and protecting areas from contamination. “AIRTech was our first step in finding a solution [to cleaning the ocean],” says Tim Woodward, COO of AIRTech Foam. “Our mission was to be an integral part of resolving this global problem. Since we are all surfers, and enjoy relating with the ocean on many levels, our next step was to dedicate ourselves to finding a new formula to be an eco-friendly alternative to the 100% toxic material in the make-up of modern surfboards,” Woodward describes. Born out of a genuine desire to clean the ocean and protect the environment, AIRTech’s product, “Be Better Foam,” turned out to have a variety of applications. With Be Better Boards’ blanks, shapers can finally breathe freely and make boards without wearing the standard protective gear. What’s even more groundbreaking is that with the Be Better Board’s closed cell technology, a dinged or damaged board can still be surfed on without it becoming water logged, because even exposed foam does not absorb water. The issue of toxicity in surfboard manufacturing struck a chord with the management team, all of who surf and grew up in surfing communities. In 2013, AIRTech received the California Small Business of the Year Award from the state legislature for their innovative practices in manufacturing clean energy products to protect the natural environment. Expanding the foam product into the surfing industry was a logical and carefully thought-out extension of the product’s capabilities.