Environment FAQs

When you make anything, you have an environmental impact.

Nurturing our environment has been the driving passion for James since day one. He wanted to find a way to make more environmentally conscious surfboards and disrupt the surf industry to make more people aware of the impact of their equipment.

We’re currently working with Plymouth University to do a full lifecycle assessment of our products, with the surfboards being the main focus to determine our carbon footprint.

Whilst we feel sure that we’re putting the environment first in any decision in the designing and making of our boards, there is a distinct difference between being morally green and scientifically green, so we’ll see how the study comes back.

Each board uses the equivalent of a piece of timber the same length of the board that is 150mm x 150mm square.

It is the most efficient way we have found so far to use timber to make a surfboard.

There is approximately 0.8 litres of glues and adheisives in each board and we use a bio epoxy resin to finish the boards with a single layer of 4oz fibreglass cloth on the top and bottom.

Our cedar all comes from Stourhead Western Estate in Wiltshire, where the woodland is run using a regenerative woodland management system call continuous cover.

Our poplar comes from East Brothers Sawmill in Salisbury, who source it from 5 local woodlands that are managed sustainably.

Our hardwoods are either repurposed, found, donated or grown in local woodlands.

We use predominantly Western Red Cedar and Poplar, because the timber is relatively lightweight and it is grown here in the South West of the UK.

By using locally grown timbers, we cut down on the carbon footprint of the materials, support our local forestry industry and their regenerative forestry management and support healthy, bio diverse woodlands.

We also love having a face to face relationship with the people who produce the timber we use.

To read an in-depth article that answers this question, click here.

Our cedar all comes from Stourhead Western Estate in Wiltshire, where the woodland is run using a regenerative woodland management system call continuous cover.

Continuous cover mixes multiple timber species to create a bio diverse and healthy woodland that naturally regenerates at a rate that exceeds the timber harvesting of a commercial woodland. So no need to plant new trees because the woodland is healthy enough to do it all by itself.

This means no mono-crops and no clearfelling making for healthier soil, healthier woodland and healthier biodiversity.

By managing woodlands in this way, the hope is that we leave them healthier than we found them.

Find more information on it here.

We use as much of the wood we have as we can.

The larger, cleaner lengths go into making our paddleboards and surfboards and the off-cuts from those go into our bellyboards and handplanes.

From there, they become kindling for the woodburner that heats the workshop.

We use wood shavings for packaging void fill, so when you buy some or our products, you’ll get a sweet smell of the workshop too.

Our sawdust is collected by a couple of local folk who use it for mulch on their gardens and veg patches and if we end up with any excess, there is a local company who turn it into briquettes for woodburners.

We sort our waste as best we can and reduce our consumption of it wherever possible.

We recycle anything we possibly can and minimize our printing in the office, keeping everything digital where we can.

We went for a year without a ‘waste bin’ in the office and the workshop to see what we accumulated the most and to see if we could find ways to re-use or repurpose it. The main things were lumps of cured glues, disposable protective gloves and plastic film that foods are packaged in.

To combat this, we’ve started to pour all of our excess glues into one tub in the hope that we can find a way to use the cured block in something in the future. With the gloves, we have tried to find the strongest pairs that use natural materials. we’ve found some pretty good ones, but are still keen to do better. And for the plastic films, we’ve all become far more aware of it so are purchasing food more consciously, whilst collecting everything we do buy, washing it, shredding it and packing it into eco bricks.