ake a junky surfboard that's been sitting in the back yard all winter. Grind it up. What can you do with it? Turn it into street pavement? You can. You even can turn it into a new surfboard.
The board won't win a beauty contest. But Joey Santley of San Clemente can tell you how it helped spawn www.resurf.org, a foundation that's nudging the surf industry to go "green" and reinvent itself.
Santley and Steve Cox are partners in Green Foam Blanks, a San Clemente firm that recycles polyurethane surfboard foam into fresh new surfboard blanks. Recycled foam dust – unlike ground-up old junky surfboards – can produce near-immaculate foam blanks.
How it began: Santley, 44, grew up in south Orange County. His dad owned Surfglas, a renowned surfboard factory. "I grew up in that factory," Santley said.
Four years ago, while working outside the surf industry, Santley learned that his son Luke, 2, was autistic. Joey and Allison Santley stopped everything to focus on their son, deciding "that whatever we do with our lives is going to be something that's part of the solution rather than the problem," Joey Santley said.
