2008 Archives: Grain Sustainable Hardwood Surfboards
Those who grow up near the beach believe it’s their duty to surf. But we at EcoStiletto have resisted, despite our proximity to the ocean. Maybe it was seeing “Jaws” at an impressionable age, or the fact that every surfer we know has had a run in with a rock or some other sharp object, leading to copious blood loss and usually stitches. Or maybe it’s because the idea of sitting on a board in the middle of the ocean, unable to see our feet, totally freaks us out. Add to that the fact that most boards are made from polyurethane foam, a highly toxic substance that’s especially dangerous to the workers who fill and shape the blanks, and it seems like the greenest thing to do would be to just stay the hell out of the water.
But surfers are an action-oriented bunch. So when the EPA closed the Clark Foam, the company responsible for distributing more than half the blanks to the entire world, for safety violations in 2005, the community began looking at environmentally friendly options. And although many are still producing boards using so-called non-toxic foam, there are a handful of companies which are going back to basics, exploring traditional means of hand-crafting the same type of wooden surfboards that started all this hullabaloo a hundred or so years ago.
That’s why we love Grain Surfboards, which says it all in their mission statement: “Grain Surfboards was created by a group of friends with a similar vision: to face up to our responsibility for the environmental impacts of surfing but still to surf a great board.” Made from sustainably-harvested wood from small, family-owned sawmills in Maine, these boards may feel slightly heavier on land, but because of the wood’s natural buoyancy, in the water they’re lighter and ride longer than foam boards.
A Grain board in our possession would probably never actually hit the surf, but they’re so ridiculously gorgeous we’d sure love to hang one on the wall.
