Ryan was the first shaper ever to earn the Gold standard. “Ry Harris was one of the first to commit 100% to making ecoboards,” says Sustainable Surf cofounder Kevin Whilden. “That was key. Back in 2012 he was one of the only glassers to make ecoboards. He showed that he could make high performance boards that work well and were sustainable. So many surf companies started using him—and they still do— but back then he was the only resource.” Today dozens of board makers, including makers of stand-up paddleboards, windsurf boards and kiteboards, have Sustainable Surf certification. But Ryan’s commitment to zero waste in his workshop puts him in something of a different category. “Ry is doing it all over again,” says Kevin. “Number one was to show that you could use sustainable materials that don’t affect performance or quality. Number two is Ry’s focus on zero waste, on upcycling and recycling. So again, he’s a leader, an innovator setting an example for everyone else in the surf world.” Still, only about 10% of surfboards made today are considered environmentally sustainable. “But it’s changing,” says Kevin. “That’s a big jump from 1% six or seven years ago. In another five years it will be, ‘Why wouldn’t I do that?’ But if not for Sustainable Surf and Ry Harris, it wouldn’t even be close to where we are now.” YOU MIGHT SMELL FOOD Back in the Earth Technologies shop—in a nondescript, light-industrial complex off South Sepulveda in Torrance—Ryan is pulling a sheet of thin fiberglass over a SUP board
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and bathing it in biopoxy. He is wearing disposable gloves but no respirator. OSHA needn’t have a cow over the latter fact, because this is a VOC-free shop. No volatile organic compounds—the stuff you smell in paints, thinners, glues, etc. And in poly-based resins. “Yeah, nothing smells here,” Ryan says. “Well, you might smell food sometimes.” The surf industry “loses guys to cancer every year,” according to Ryan, “guys who have been shaping with toxic poly resins.” Only in one workshop room do Ryan and his coworkers wear masks, and that’s in the airtight shaping room where foam blanks are shaped and sanded into surfboards. That, of course, creates particulates in the air that eventually settle to the floor, as do bigger chunks of foam. What happens to those sweepings? Worm food, of course. Those disposable gloves Ryan is wearing will get tossed into the drip trays beneath the board-shaping stations, along with strips of masking tape, to get coated with excess resin and harden into odd-looking blobs. No, that’s not worm food, but it gets fed into the shop’s industrial-strength shredder—an impressive beast that’s between R2-D2 and C-3PO in size. Those shavings go into making coasters and countertops and whatever else Ryan and his crew come up with (e.g., hand planes for bodysurfing, fins and key chains.) In fact, Ryan calls his coworkers “zerowaste technicians.” Because in Ryan’s world, “making a coaster is just as important as glassing a surfboard.” WAVES OF SUCCESS Ryan will be the first to tell you that it’s not
easy to make a living as a board shaper, let alone one dedicated to making sustainable boards. “The running joke around here is that margins so suck on surfboards that we’ll end up making money from our trash.” Still, Ryan is on target to make 1,000 boards this year, plus he and the crew do private-label work for other board manufacturers. He’s fresh off a big trade show and so swamped with orders that his voicemail cautions callers that he doesn’t talk during working hours. Hilton has ordered no fewer than 400 decorative ecoboards that will hang on the walls of a Westside hotel. And Ryan has gained notoriety among surf cognoscenti, including pro surfer Hunter Jones and former pro and current World Surf League commissioner Jessi Miley-Dyer. “We call them ecoboard ambassadors,” Ryan says. It’s all part of his campaign to overcome a skeptical marketplace. “Most surfers give a shit about the environment, or we wouldn’t have a sport. So they’re becoming more and more open, especially when they see a pro on something eco. We did a foilboard for [pro surfer] John John Florence. Now we’re doing lots of them.” He’s also upping his tech game with new board blanks imbued with strong composite stringers that permit careful tuning of a board’s flex pattern. But Ryan doesn’t geek out too much on topics like that. The performance of his boards speaks for itself. He will geek out endlessly about zero waste (“We don’t even have a dumpster anymore”), upcycling, recycling and, of course, mealworms. He tosses a chunk of agave into a bin crawling with foam-eating critters. “Gotta keep ’em hydrated.” ■