the perfect look. but beneath the surface lies a murkier side. for every pristine peak, broken boards and piles of cheap polystyrene dumped on our beaches. it s really disheartening to see this amount of waste come forward. surfers may enjoy the fresh sea air, but the industry relies on toxic chemicals, producing suits and boards derived from oil. and living that dream of being at one with nature is getting more and more difficult. we do want to encourage people to get outdoors, but at the same time, at what cost to the planet? so i want to know, can surfing clean up its act? i ve surfed for more than a decade, but this is my first day on the water for over three years. new year s day 2020 and the fin of my board went into my face. i was left with 16 stitches, and it has taken me this long to start trying to get over my fear. today i ve come to the calmer waters of an inland surf lake near bristol to try and start getting back my love of surfing. as a journalist covering the
we ve gathered these. yeah. we found these ones, which have got to be from the 80s or 90s. it s in really good condition. it s really good condition! neoprene is such a strong material that they ve used it to line landfill in the past, so that goes to show how long it will take to degrade. yeah. but when it does, it s so harmful for the environment. have you got any idea of the scale of the problem you re trying to tackle? in all honesty, until we started this collection, not really. like, the stats aren t even out there. we ve had to do our own research to look at the size of the global wetsuit market. we ve conservatively come to probably about 8000 tons of neoprene a year will ultimately end up in landfill because there s nowhere else to put them. so, what do they plan to do with all these old, washed up wetsuits? well, six months later, this is the result. it may not look much but company boss tom kay thinks it could be the future. we ve taken the thousand wetsuits that were dest
but choosing a sustainable option isn t going to be easy because, once again, the petrochemical industry is behind the traditional wetsuit material, neoprene. it s been used to manufacture them for more than 70 years. it s energy intensive to make and the toxic chemical it s made from is a possible carcinogen. and a neoprene wetsuit isn t going to biodegrade any time soon. it s estimated abouti million are incinerated or end up in landfill every year. recycling them hasn t been an option. ..until now. in an anonymous lock up in east london, one british surf company has been collecting old wetsuits its customers had lying around. this is the collection of suits that we gathered, and i think. that s a lot of suits. ..just in this pile here, we ve probably got about just over 950. less than four weeks
to the environment. the company says the carbon impact of manufacturing here is 90% less than rival boards. 0ur carbon footprint, it s about 24kg of c02 from cradle to grave. and epoxy surfboards are 250kg. but all these boards have got to end up somewhere. so, what are they doing about the waste? today, i m catching up with mark, but i m staying beachside in britain to keep those air miles down. the fact that a wavestorm board is so cheap, that s really adding to the amount of waste produced there s no getting away from that. you know, we try to keep the price low for the people and when something s low, you know, you really tend to throw it on the ground or leave it in the garage or leave it outdoors in the rain. so, in your view, it s not the hundreds of thousands of boards you re producing,
based camera crew. it s here that one of the most successful mass produced boards is made. this is the wavestorm. launched in 2006, it took the us well by storm. it doesn t cost a lot, you can buy it in a supermarket, and it s known as the people s board. it s a long way from the wooden works of art of the ancient hawaiians. it s been blamed for making boards so cheap, they can just be thrown away. today, the company says it s doing things in a more sustainable way. mark dale is the company s chief marketing officer. so, this is where we do a lot of lamination on the boards. the factory uses the latest tech to reduce its waste and reliance on those toxic resins. the cores are loaded to machine and we re using hot air here and it s applying the raw material right onto the board. we don t use any epoxies or glues that are damaging