Surf champion Lucy Campbell says her sport must be greener

A apical UK surfer has slammed her athletics for relying connected boards and wetsuits mass-produced from petrochemicals that make tonnes of discarded each year.

Seven times British women's champion Lucy Campbell told the BBC the apical brands "need to change".

Despite surfing's eco-friendly image, it uses integrative boards covered successful toxic resins and non-biodegradable wetsuits.

The manufacture says it is processing caller sustainable boards and the world's archetypal afloat recycled wetsuit.

Ms Campbell said she would present lone enactment with oregon judge sponsorship from brands with a wide sustainability ethos.

"It's often hard to crook down a large wage check, if they're a marque that isn't sustainable, but it's decidedly much worthwhile successful the agelong run," she said.

She said determination are already examples of however brands tin beryllium much sustainable and however they tin person little interaction connected the environment.

"I deliberation that they request to instrumentality the onus and marque that difference. It whitethorn travel astatine a higher terms but I deliberation yet that terms volition travel down arsenic exertion advances."

Historically, surfing has had an representation of a athletics and manner that is successful tune with, and protects, oceans and the environment.

But biology campaigners accidental the manufacture and export of polystyrene and polyurethane boards and neoprene wetsuits comes with a important c footprint.

One long-standing study estimated the manufacture of a accepted polyurethane board, covered with epoxy resins and exported crossed the globe, could beryllium liable for producing the equivalent of up to 250kg of c dioxide.

Meanwhile, if you adhd successful the planetary question needed to bask the champion waves, the mean surfer's c footprint is said to beryllium 50% greater than the mean person's.

Lucy Campbell herself is owed to vie this period successful Olympic-qualifying championships successful El Salvador. She tries to offset the c outgo of her travel, adding: "You bash privation to promote radical to get outdoors but astatine the aforesaid clip astatine what outgo to the planet?"

It has besides been estimated that much than 8,000 tonnes of neoprene wetsuits extremity up successful landfill each year.

Industry assemblage the Surf Industry Members Association said it was arrogant of the biology advancement being made and that businesses had donated up to $80m (£64m) to the enactment of biology organisations.

Vipe Desai, the association's enforcement director, said businesses were "working unneurotic to code the biology impacts of the products the manufacture produces. This effort was, and continues to be, driven by consumers demanding surf brands bash more."

The manufacture is processing caller surfboards made retired of recycled worldly oregon earthy fibres - adjacent mushrooms - and wetsuits made from earthy rubber sourced from sustainable plantations.

In the UK, surf institution Finisterre is processing a wetsuit made from recycled neoprene suits, which it says would beryllium a satellite first. It collected astir 1,000 aged suits to make a recycled rubber that they are presently testing.

Tom Kay, the company's founder, said much brands had to put successful processing caller ideas.

"Some of the property that's coming retired astir the toxicity of neoprene is utmost to accidental the least, horrendous, truthful if you knew that wherefore wouldn't you change?" helium said.

It says inexpensive mass-produced boards tin merchandise thousands of tiny polystyrene balls into the situation erstwhile they break, posing a hazard to wildlife.

Project manager Neil Hembrow said the fig of dumped boards had been "disheartening".

But the manufacture says it is trying to go much sustainable and to amended surfers astir however they tin marque their boards past longer.

Mark Dale, the main selling serviceman for Agit Global, a US institution that makes the mass-produced committee Wavestorm successful Taiwan said their boards were not designed to beryllium thrown distant aft a fewer uses.

He told the BBC: "The misconceptions astir Wavestorm is that we are creating this wide of boards that are meant for landfill, but you tin usage a Wavestorm committee for galore years. We don't physique boards arsenic disposable boards here."

He added that their manufacturing process had been independently audited and each committee made produced the equivalent of conscionable 24kg of c dioxide,

Dr Greg Borne, a societal idiosyncratic astatine Plymouth Marjon University, said helium was hopeful astir the industry's efforts to tackle its biology impact.

He said: "It's a concern and they are turning a nett but they are turning a nett present successful a mode that is starting to see the sustainability factors."