Greening The Green Room: the collapose of Clark Foam and the rise of the eco-board
Greening
The Green Room: the collapose of Clark
Foam and the rise of the eco-board
by Sam
Bleakley
Cartoon Robbie MacIntosh
The green room – inside the tube - is the
ultimate destination for every surfer. Lost in liquid, it’s a place where time time slews in the
strangest ways, sliding in surreal slow motion. Surfing is
dominated by this dream of the ‘perfect day’ - thick glassy waves and long
hollow rides. We call these sessions ‘unreal’, because these are the perfect
moments, rarely found. Indeed they are ‘hyper-real’, beyond the norm, and
sometimes ‘sur-real’ as we seem to enter another dimension. But these days are
more talked about than experienced. They are part of the folklore of surfing at
the heart of which is the quest for perfection. This quest also extends to the
search for the ‘perfect board’. A ‘magic’ one promotes a wonderful
confidence in a surfer, suddenly taking you deeper into the pocket than you
could ever imagine. It will carve an unforgettable smile on the face, keeping
your fires stoked until another day tips whole into a plum coloured sea, and
you are the only one left surfing under a rising moon, still stoked, already
planning the dawn patrol.
But despite our quest to find the green
room, and the ‘perfect board’, surfers have not always been environmentally
green. The surfboard industry has a toxic past, heavily reliant on oil-based
chemicals grafted from the aerospace industry in the 1950s and 1960s. Green,
clean equipment hasn’t been the norm since the 1920s, when Hawaiians carved alaia and olo boards from trees such as redwood. Surfing turned toxic when
climate and culture combined in California and surfing boomed with polyurethane
foam and fibreglass. Although carcinogenic, this was cheap, versatile, had a
cosmetic appeal, tolerated thermal ranges and was easy to construct, giving
rise to constantly evolving surfboard designs. While poorly blown blanks
showing imperfections were two a penny in the early days of surfboard
manufacture, Clark Foam had cornered
the market with a dependable (but toxic as hell) product by the 1960s. If
surfboard blanks were soft drinks, Clark
Foam was Coca-Cola – ubiquitous,
delicious and damn harmful to health, but trustworthy in quality.
Cartoon Robbie MacIntosh
Even the brown-bread-and-sandals-brigade of
the 1970s couldn’t find boards that went better than foam and fibreglass. But
they got wise: Fuz Bleakley, Simonne Renvoize and Paul Holmes ran Surf Insight magazine in Cornwall with
an ecology page, long before Surfers
Against Sewage, advocating what surfers could do to keep the sea clean by
engaging with local politics. Surf
Insight, like Rolling Stone, was
cutting edge, focusing on contemporary environmental issues and deep probing
interviews, making surfing an intellectual as well as a physical and emotional
adventure. Trouble was the sharp articles, bringing together social critique
and satire, were ahead of their time. Although Surf Insight offered a springboard to Cornishman Paul Holmes, who
went on to edit, and change the face of, Tracks,
Surfer and Longboard magazine, British surf journalism’s eco-credentials
slumped until the launch of Alex Dick-Read’s The Surfers Path. Raised between the UK and the Caribbean, Alex
gave contemporary surfing an articulate voice, and The Surfers Path was the first ‘green’ magazine, printed on 100
percent post consumer recycled paper, processed without chlorine bleach and
with non-GMO soy inks.
In 2005 polyurethane board building giant Clark Foam (at the time still the
leading American manufacturer of foam) was closed down because the product had
broken the relatively lax California environmental laws. The surf industry called
it ‘Blank Monday’. In the late 1950s, Gordon Clark started a business in
California producing foam blanks for surfboards, made in concrete moulds.
Clark’s business expanded like his foam – to dizzy heights – so that by the
early 1990s, the factory was producing over 1,000 blanks a day (offering 70 blank models in seven densities,
ranging in size from 5’9” to 12’8”), with a potential sales figure of $25
million per annum. These blanks may have been the surfboard’s democratic core
to wider participation in the sport, but their history bears all the hallmarks
of capitalism’s uncertainty and ambiguity. On ‘Blank Monday’, the Clark Foam business, with a near
monopoly, suddenly collapsed. It was as if the inspiration behind traditional
blanks had suddenly departed the planet, leaving a heavy residue. The prized
concrete moulds that the blanks were made in were broken up as a gesture. The
California State Environmental Protection Agency said Clark were constantly stepping over the line of State law
concerning working safely with toxic materials. The surfboard business
overnight itself became a blank. And every surfer bears the burden of this
collapse, and must share the conscience that comes with traditional surfboards
being one of the most polluting products on the planet. Surfers would rather
blank this out.
Surfer magazine referred
to Clark Foam’s collapse as ‘leaving
a void’ that could not be readily filled. The collapse of the blank left a
blank. The spirit of the traditional surfboard evaporated and promoted what was
seen by many as a welcome kick up the backside to those who relied so heavily
upon highly polluting materials to bolster their sport. A dramatic turn was
forced to look for new, non-polluting ways to make surfboards. Fast.
The reaction was a new wave of small-scale,
ecologically-sensitive productions - surfboards made of hemp, balsa, bamboo,
carbon-fibre and paulownia wood. Thankfully some shapers were switching
attention to surfing’s roots in Hawaiian trees and natural oils, building
boards out of local, sustainably grown wood. Overnight there was also a mega
shift towards epoxy, which use 20 less polluting VOC's (Volatile Organic
Compounds) than 1960s style foam and fibreglass (which had remained dominant
because it was cheap, easy to shape, holds details, tolerates temperatures, and
was happily glassed with polyester resin). The blank that the collapse of Clark Foam left had created new
personalities for surfboards as a necessary response.
And old friend from Cornwall, Chris Ryan,
in response, tried and make a longboard out of metal. He wrapped sheet aluminum
around a shaped Styrofoam blank and tig-welded the seams along the rails. With
a metal fin welded onto the tail, the board was ready. The trouble was most of
the Styrofoam core had melted during the welding, leaving cavities. Every time
the board hit a chop on the wave it sounded like someone banging a 45-gallow
drum with a spanner!
At that time, my brother-in-law built an alaia from some paulownia wood imported
from China, carved down in Cornwall and coated it with linseed oil. It had the
tang of a cricket bat, and a rich, vibrant colour. I was eager to try it. The
sea felt sullen and resistant, but the alaia
paddled easily, and darted into a small wave. It burst through the face. I fell
immediately. It was like trying to ride a unicycle down a steep staircase.
Outback I sat up on the board. It sunk so deep I realised the alaia was halfway between fish and bird.
Just rising to my feet was an achievement. The challenge became infectious and
uplifting. It embodied the characteristic optimism of learning to surf, where
the more you step in, the more you stand out. I finally found a good wave. In
trim the board made a raunchy, buzzing guitar- and horn-inflected sound. I went
for metres, not trying to break the back, or snap at the green face, but just
sliding along it, hanging on, sometime sideways. When the slow, rooted bass
became thick and heavy, I sunk and the ride ended. Sunlight pierced through the
clouds and I paddled out for more. That bright tune rang around in my head. On
one wave the board almost disappeared below the surface, then flexed and
catapulted back into the curl. I awakened the senses, and then challenged every
skill of balance and timing. Enjoyment is sometimes about experimentation.
I was not surprised that the alaia became all-the-rage for a while. It
stripped surfing back to the fundamentals, inspiring many riders to celebrate a
rainbow spectrum of board designs, re-inventing the old, and developing the new.
By its very nature, surfing encourages freedom of expression. Fashions may
change but there is one constant in surfing – style. It’s about being
individual and being expressive. Why not bring back a burst of character, knee
paddle out on your carbon neutral eco-hemp board, pull under a green curtain,
rejoice in your wackiness and kick out to face another day.
Cartoon Robbie MacIntosh
