carbon free surfing

In its October "green" issue, SURFING Magazine announced a plan to purchase carbon offsets to minimize the impact of their business. A good move, but nothing out of the ordinary these days.

What is entirely out of the ordinary is the response from one of the all-time great surfers, Kelly Slater. Kelly recently announced that he would commit to the same program — retroactively for his entire career!

As the SURFING press release stated:

Considering his career spans all the way back to 1991, we’re talking a hell of a lot of newly planted trees.

Here's what Kelly had to say for himself in the same release:

I've thought about it for years, but wasn't actually sure how to do it. It's definitely something you wonder about after all that traveling, the effect all that fuel consumption has on the planet. The guys at Carbonfund made it really easy to do. I made a brief calculation of my travel over the years. I spend about two weeks a year actually in the sky flying and quite a few driving miles which both add up a little differently. I’ve done around 4 million miles total, which I thought would break the bank when the end result came. But it adds up to around five acres of replanting that costs around $5500.

Michael Stewart, Partnerships Director at CarbonFund, added:

Like his eight world titles, it’s clearly another great first for Kelly, and an open invite for all surfers to look at the long trail of CO2 left behind by modern surf travel. Think of it this way: would you start a tire fire on the beach at Pipe? Well, if you don’t compensate for the CO2 from plane ride over there through reforestation or green power projects, you basically just did.

FYI:

The primary option for Carbonfund’s newly formed CarbonFree Surfing Program is reforestation. SURFING Magazine committed to mangroves in India; Slater is putting his efforts toward the San Juan Del Sur area in Nicaragua. Kelly will have 25 different indigenous species planted on a private reserve bordering the Escamequita River, which protects the watershed leading right to the beach. This is not only important turtle nesting habitat, but it also protects water quality for all the surf breaks south of SJDS, including the threatened wave at Playa Yankee.

Kudos all around: to Kelly Slater, SURFING and Carbonfund. And, here's hoping that the surfing community fully embraces the idea of CarbonFree Surfing!

Carbon Neutral Journal's kudos are brought to you by Grand Targhee Resort.

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