Finisterre, a small and exclusive brand located on the cliffs of Northern Cornwall, pioneering in the areas of sustainability and technical apparel for the surfer have a fantastic story about Bowmont sheep and British wool.
This is such a great story/project so we felt it necessary to blog all about it (see below).

“Hi Finisterre, all is well here. The Bowmonts had an MOT yesterday when I checked on their body condition. We are only a few weeks away from putting the rams in now and I have to get them “fit not fat” which means enough body condition to be healthy but not so much that they lay down fat around the ovaries etc which affects conception”, said Lesley, Finisterre’s fine wool and sheep expert in Devon.

Finisterre, the award winning ethical surf brand that set the standards in ethical business have raised the bar once again, this time working in partnership with a small farmer from Devon to bring back from near extinction a rare breed of sheep with the intention of sourcing some of the worlds finest wool right on their doorstep.

To understand where Finisterre and Lesley are right now, you have to step back to the 1970s and the ‘Macaulay Institute’ in Scotland. The institute successfully managed after twenty years to cross breed the super fine wool producing Merino, with the hardy all weather rough and ready Shetland, creating the ‘Bowmont’. Unfortunately these unique sheep, despite producing wool even finer than the prized Merino and fit for the hard life in the hills were left due to market conditions to breed with sheep all over the country and became a rare breed.

Back to the present and Finisterre, who on their search for a wool producer closer to home found Lesley, a fine fibre specialist farmer in Devon who knows how to keep a happy flock. Lesley’s been scouring the lands collecting up the last Bowmont’s, and is now working closely with the team at Finisterre to save these sheep from near extinction.

“We’ve all been up to the farm to help with shearing and lambing and understand fully what goes on, such as the attention to the husbandry and welfare, it’s a great initiative for us to get involved in, and we know with Lesley and her team, the sheep are in safe hands” said Finisterre’s design director Tom Podkolinski. Expect the exclusive and super fine Bowmont wool, to be in Finisterre’s base layers and other garments in the not to near future.

Find out more about Finisterre – www.finisterreuk.com

el mar, mi alma – Teaser (English) from Rebel Waltz Films on Vimeo.

Here’s the first footage from the tour – ‘El Mar, Mi Alma’ and surfer/activist group ‘Surfers for Cetaceans’ who journeyed to Chile in lead up to the ‘International Whaling Commission’ conference in Santiago.

Led by Dave Rastovich they travelled three thousand kilometers meeting with school children, universities, marine biologists, environmental groups, mayors, ministers, artists, fisherman and surfers to share and promote ideas on marine mammal conservation and the protection of our fragile coastal environments.

Billabong have just launched the B9 Platinum wetsuit, there most eco-friendly wetsuit to date.

The Eco-warrior, Rasta has launched this new range of wetsuits and if he’s backing it we can be pretty sure that the B9 is as eco-friendly as Billabong say it is.

90% of the Billabong Platinum B9 wetsuits external and internal fabrics (called the ‘B9 Flex’ and ‘B9 Thermal Flex’) are made from returned polyester products such as old fishing nets and clothing.

The balance 10% of the Platinum B9 fabric is a unique spandex fabric knitted in a way that allows the suit amazing elasticity and soft hand feel. The Platinum B9 also includes water-based inks to further reduce its impact on the environment.

It’s estimated the whole production process for the platinum B9 consumes 80% less energy and produces 80% less carbon dioxide emissions than a regular suit.

It’s only available in Australia at the moment but as soon as it arrives in the UK we’ll be getting our salty mitts on a range of B9s.

SAS is calling on the Government to introduce and implement a National Marine Litter Strategy to stop the ever-increasing tide of rubbish washing up across our shores. SAS campaigners were joined by O’Neill team rider Sam Lamiroy and other pro surfers for the launch of the petition as it went live at:

Click here to sign the petition – http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/marine-litter/

We are calling on our supporters and the wider public to sign the petition calling for the implementation of a National Marine Litter Strategy, which will help protect the UKs coastline, oceans and waves for generations to come. Please sign the petition today if you can!

Find out more at savethebay.org

Eden boards and leading UK surfers Mark Harris and Tassy Swallow.
Photo by Sam Morgan Mooore/Apexnewspix.com

Story from The Surfers Path:

The revolutionary new Eden surfboard was launched today (March 19) at Fistral Beach in Newquay and proved a winner with two top surfers.

Leading British professional Mark “Egor” Harris and junior British surfing champion Tassy Swallow took to the waves on the new boards and praised them for their green credentials and performance in the water.

Mark said: “It felt good and I can see these boards being popular with surfers. We spend a lot of time on the beach and in the sea and surfers have been campaigning to clean up the oceans for years. This board goes hand-in-hand with that philosophy.”

After trying the board for the first time, Tassy said: “It’s a really good board, it worked really well. It feels a lot more buoyant in the nose, which makes it easier to catch waves. It will really catch on when people realise that it’s as good as a regular board.”

Next week, Tassy is due to take her new Eden surfboard to the International Surfing Association World Junior Championships in Ecuador.

Mark Beeley, Eden’s Retail Director, said: “After five years in development, we’re delighted to launch the new Eden surfboard in the beautiful spring sunshine on Fistral. This is the chance for surfers to own not only one of the most sustainable surfboards in the world but one which has the endorsement of two top surfers.”

“This is a real Cornish success story, the Eden team championing the idea, local companies developing innovative technology and then being able to sell it at a very competitive price.”

The ultimate in sustainable surfboards is made from more environmentally-friendly materials than those used in conventional board production.

The board’s national launch today is the result of a five-year collaboration between the Eden Project and three other Cornwall-based companies – Homeblown, Sustainable Composites and, more recently, Laminations.

The eco-board idea began after a giant balsa tree toppled in Eden’s Rainforest Biome, leading Eden team members to discuss what could be done with the spare timber.

There followed several years of hard development work to figure out how to reduce a reliance on petroleum chemicals used in conventional surfboard production and produce a surfboard made with more sustainable materials.

Eden linked up with Homeblown who developed a new foam core (or blank), 15-20 per cent of which is from plant-derived material.

Alongside this Eden worked with Sustainable Composites who developed a resin made almost entirely from linseed oil yet giving all the qualities of traditional oil-derived coatings.

These revolutionary ingredients have been combined by local board manufacturer Laminations to produce the Eden surfboard.

The result is a board in which more than 50 per cent of the materials used by weight are from renewable sources. This is a significant step on from traditional boards which are largely made from oil-derived products.

Before the launch, the prototype board has been extensively tested by champion surfers to make sure that being more sustainable didn’t compromise performance.

The Eden surfboard is available now from the Eden Project web shop (www.edenproject.com/shop) in a variety of styles that can be tailor made to your own specification from as little as £365.

Throughout the summer these boards will be available to try at a number of surf events being organised by Surfers against Sewage (www.sas.org.uk).

The Age of Stupid: final trailer Feb 2009, (bleeped) from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the future, which will have its world premiere in London on March 15th 2009 and then be released in UK cinemas on March 20th 2009, followed by other countries.

Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off) stars as a man living alone in the devasted world of 2055, looking back at “archive” footage from 2007 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

www.ageofstupid.net

An organisation called Plastic’s Not Fantastic has been setup to make the world realise that plastic sticks around forever and is a huge problem.

Please check out the site, it helps each other out by sharing tips & advice on how to AVOID buying plastic. Each one of us does count & the way we spend OUR MONEY will make a difference. Remember a lot of things are packaged in plastic to trick you into spending more money than you need to (see attachement)

Here’s what PNF have to say;

“Plastic’s not fantastic, (or Pnf! As I like to call it) is just me and a few of my friends, (Michelle, Jonny etc) who give a monkeys about the amount of toxic stuff we chuck, the waste we produce and the amount of energy and resources we consume.

Is there any need to shrink wrap fruit?

100% of the plastic we have ever produced is still around the majority of it in the ocean.

Perhaps by spreading the word a few others will start looking at their own habits.”

www.plasticsnotfantastic.org