Top award puts green champion Hines on the crest of a wave
 
Chris Hines, the Eden Project’s Sustainability Director and creator of the environmentally-friendly Eco Board, has been awarded the prestigious Emerald Path award by top surfing magazine The Surfer’s Path.
 
Over the last five years Chris has instigated and overseen the implementation of Eden’s pioneering Waste Neutral concept, leading to a 60 per cent diversion of the project’s waste from landfill.
 
He has been the main driving force in the integration of sustainability within the operations and decision making of the project. He played a key role in the staging of the Africa Calling concert in July 2005, which was part of the Live 8 event broadcast worldwide.
 
In declaring him joint winner alongside American Glenn Hening, co-founder of the Surfrider Foundation, The Surfer’s Path – a magazine read globally – paid tribute to Chris’s development of Eden’s Eco Boards, stating: “Through Eden’s mainstream consultancy work they’re being used to inspire big industry to rethink all kinds of toxic manufacturing processes.
 
“Again, thanks to Hines’s surf-based vision, a cleaner, greener future actually looks possible.”
 
Chris headed up the team who devised the fully-biodegradable surfboard made from balsa, hemp and a plant-based resin. The board is the environmental antidote to the toxic lumps of petrochemicals ridden by most surfers.
 
In summer 2005, he spearheaded Eden’s partnership with The Surfing Museum in Brighton to create the Full Circle exhibition. The show, which debuted at the Eden Project and has since travelled around the country, shows how surf technology has come full circle from the original wood boards to the cutting-edge Eco Board.
 
Chris first became well known as a founding member and director of the pressure group Surfers Against Sewage.
 
He was with SAS from 1990 until 2000 during which time they were described as “Some of the Government’s most sophisticated environmental critics” by BBC News and “Britain’s coolest pressure group” by The Independent.
 
Within 5 years he had built SAS to a membership of 20,000 with an annual turnover of over £400,000 employing 11 members of staff. By 1995 SAS was one of Britain’s leading environmental pressure groups.
 
Chris was the runner-up in the 1999 Green Politics Award and his work helped deliver a £5 billion spend on the UK coastline. He has given evidence to Commons and Lords Select Committees, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and the European Parliament and Commission. He was also called as a special advisor to the Rt.Hon. Michael Meacher MP, Minister for the Environment.
 
Chris said: “I am delighted to be given such a great accolade and am glad that efforts to clean up surfing’s act are being recognised. Being nominated alongside the likes of Glenn Hening and singer-songwriter Jack Johnson is an honour and to have won the award jointly is even better.
 
“I am a great believer in the power of surfing as a tool to raise awareness of environmental issues. Since we created the Eco Board in 2004, it has received a huge amount of attention which, in turn, has highlighted the valuable sustainable work that Eden does.”