Updated May 2 at 10 a.m. The other day, I heard from Joey Santley, who said that …lost is now in production on boards for sale at retail from Green Foam blanks. Joey’s note said that the boards are mostly Thrusters. Here’s part of what Joey posted on Green Foam’s Facebook page this week: Lost Surfboards is in production of Green Foam stock boards! Ask your local retailer/ shaper for some Green Foam in your next board – because you care about your impact on the world and want to be part of the solution and not the problem.
In the months since we first told you about Green Foam and the debut of its first production recycled surfboard at the opening day of the January ASR show, Joey Santley and Steve Cox have been getting lots of pub and love – and some business, too.
I checked back with Joey to see how things are going, who’s getting the boards, and what’s next. After popping into the shaper’s bay behind Catalyst Surf Shop on San Clemente’s North Beach, we hopped into Joey’s truck and headed over to Shaper’s Alley to see some Green Foam blanks, finished boards – and bags and bags of shapers’ dust set aside for Joey and Steve to collect and recycle.
Pros get theirs first
Green Foam blanks stacked up after being blown at Just Foam.This and next three photos courtesy Green Foam.
About 500 boards have been built from Green Foam’s recycled blanks so far, and they’ve gone to pro surfers or celebrities. Except that very first one, which was shaped by Matt Biolos and donated to the Surfing Heritage Museum in San Clemente.
Green Foam blanks are blown by Just Foam in Oceanside, and they’re available for any shaper to use for a custom board now. Joey said he hopes to make them more widely available at retail in coming weeks.
As with most products in the industry, Green Foam is hoping to gain acceptance and word-of-mouth approval from core surfers and shapers, and use that goodwill to build a business.
“We’re waiting for the wave of public consciousness to happen,” Joey told me. “The best way to get that is to get our friends who are the best surfers in the world to try them. When you see pictures and videos of the pros riding them, that’s the stamp of approval.
“They have the power, they can help us create a whole shift in the way a whole industry does things.”
So far, Joey says boards shaped from Green Foam blanks have gone to pros Chris Ward, Cory Lopez, Hans Hagen, Dustin Barka, Coco Ho, Kasey Curtis, Christian Fletcher, Shea Lopez, Hopper Eichstaed. And to celebrities Cameron Diaz, Matthew McConaughey and Perry Ferrell.
Shapers
He has fans in the …lost factory. Matt Biolos, Darryl Butsko and Dev have shaped boards from his blanks.
While we were talking near the racks in …lost’s factory, a few shapers stopped to say hello and needle Joey. “Picking up the trash?” Dev teased on his way out the back door.
He came back in to give Joey specs for making the blanks even more workable. He and Darryl told me the recycled blanks are as easy to work as virgin blanks. What would make them use more recycled blanks? Simple – if customers ordered more.
Joey Santley and Steve Cox with Scott Saunders and Sid Shneider of Just Foam. Scott is the owner
of Just Foam and Sid is the engineer.
“Over time, a lot of people will be willing to accept it,” Dev said. “Some won’t.”
Those shapers have helped Green Foam refine its product. For instance, they’re using only the finest dust that’s a byproduct of shaping with power planers. The …lost factory is setup to vacuum that dust into bags, which are set aside for Joey and Steve to collect.
Gradually, the blend has changed. Green Foam’s blanks are now about 60 percent recycled dust to virgin polyurethane. That’s about all Joey will reveal about the process of getting the dust to bond with the virgin foam to create a shapeable blank.
But Dev and Darryl seem to think Green Foam has it right. They both told me that the blanks have all the same qualities as 100 percent virgin foam blanks. Joey says they produce a board equally as durable as virgin foam boards.
Picking it all up
All of this is a labor of love.
Joey Santley, Steve Cox.
Joey and Steve pick up bags of discarded blank waste from shapers. Some bags are filled with about 50 pounds of fine dust that will be blended with new foam and recycled into new board blanks.
One 50-pound bag of dust from a factory will make about 25-30 boards, depending on the size of the blanks.
Other bags are stuffed with big chunks of foam, stringers and wasted resin that they grab for another purpose: road building. “Most of the waste from surf factories can be ground up and mixed into asphalt and concrete as an additive,” Joey says.
Joey and Steve have worked out a method to recycle and reuse neoprene used to make wetsuits, and have a pilot program underway with Quiksilver and O’Neill to collect and reuse neoprene scraps.
Here’s how he explains it: “We have figured out how to recycle the neoprene waste cuttings from wetsuit manufacturing. We process the material much like you would carpet padding.
“We take the scraps and chop/grind them into very small pieces that we reintroduce into new ‘buns’ using some virgin raw material to pull it back together. We then can slice the bun into any thickness from a roller machine – kind of like peeling a potato.
“The bun spins and a knife cuts the appropriate thickness for whatever application the material will be used for. We will be making things like yoga mats, backpack inserts and many other applications once we get up and going.”
Next up: They want to take their board and wetsuit recycling ideas to Hawaiian manufacturers. They want to expand to South Africa, Australia, Japan. And they’re hoping to land a sponsor to underwrite their expansion.
