Mother Nature Gives Greenlight for Eco-Friendly Surfboards

Greenlight Surfboard Supply has pioneered remarkable ways to effectively use bamboo – the world’s greatest sustainable resource – in surfboard construction. Natural bamboo glassing fabric, laminate bamboo stringers, and bamboo fins are the focal point of Greenlight’s innovation, as well as Bio-plastic leash plugs and removable fin systems. These eco-friendly products are now available to garage builders and custom shapers and glassers worldwide.

After almost 2 years of development, Brian Gagliana of Greenlight Surfboard Supply has refined and patented a unique method for glassing surfboards with natural bamboo fabric resulting in high performance surfboards. Not only is the bamboo glassing fabric sustainable, but it requires approximately 25 % less fabric to complete a surfboard as opposed to any other glassing material; in this case less truly is more! The deck of bamboo fabric boards can be glassed in such a way to create a textured surface – greatly reducing or even eliminating the need for wax.

Another huge step forward in eco-friendly surfboards is Greenlight’s laminate bamboo stringers. Greenlight intelligently orients strips of bamboo along the surfboard's centerline, creating an extremely strong yet powerfully flexible stringer providing more drive through a bottom turn or cutback. A laminated stringer also minimizes irregularities such as knots and grain patterns that run in various directions. These irregularities are often found in a single piece of wood, and they can affect the strength and durability of a surfboard. Therefore, a laminated stringer is more uniform in density and grain pattern, and more lively in terms of performance. Greenlight Surfboard Supply offers custom bamboo stringers to garage surfboard builders as well as blank manufacturers. In addition, bamboo fin blank panels are also offered providing board builders the freedom to cut and foil custom fin templates.

Greenlight is the first and only manufacturer to offer bio-plastic surfboard accessories. Creatively designed leash plugs molded in a biodegradable corn based bio-resin exhibit the same strength as conventional, petroleum based leash plug but with less material and much less damage to our delicate environment. Bio-plastic fins and removable fin systems are in the works.

In addition to providing the surfing community with eco-friendly material choices, Greenlight’s mission is to encourage all surfers to shape their own “green” surfboards, not just for the environment, but to elevate their personal surfing experience.

There’s no stoke greater than surfing a board you created.

In an effort to encourage more surfers to build boards, Greenlight has created a complete surfboard building kit including a set of 5 comprehensive instructional videos to make surfboard building “Simple, Clean, and Green.” The videos are unlike any other in that they fully illustrate and explain what to do, how to do, why to do, what not to do, and how to fix mistakes if happen you make them....... ensuring the surfer’s first attempt at building his/her own board performs well in the water and is fun to build and surf.

Greenlight Surfboard Supply will be running eco-friendly surfboard building contests for first time shapers with prizes ranging from natural bamboo t-shirts all the way up to free surf trips to Costa Rica and other destinations.

Greenlight would also like to see more women making their own boards so there will be women-specific promotions as well as family oriented board building programs in the near future.

The future looks very promising for eco-friendly surfboards.

Greenlight Surfboard Supply Company Info

Greenlight Surfboard Supply is leading the growing movement toward manufacturing and supplying surfboard building materials that are sustainable and which have the least impact on our delicate ecosystems.

As the world’s surfing population comes to understand the real and negative impact on the health of the global environment and the health of their ocean playgrounds, we are providing eco-friendly materials to both individual shapers and surfboard manufacturers that will have a positive impact on our planet.

Our goals include manufacturing quality surfboard building materials from renewable and sustainable resources such as bamboo, bio-plastics, and recyclable EPS foam ~ all under our Minimal Waste Philosophy

Source: Greenlight Surfboard Supply

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