The wooden bodyboards you can hire in Cornwall to cut plastic pollution

  • Watch Ken Goodwin's report

An environmentally-friendly bodyboarding scheme set up by a company in Newquay has gone national.

Surf Wood for Good set up the programme to encourage people to hire wooden bodyboards for free to limit plastic pollution on beaches.

They developed the wooden bodyboards, or belly-boards as the company call them, which offer beach-goers an alternative to throw-away plastic boards.

Cheaper polystyrene boards - made of plastic - break a lot more easily than wooden ones.

When the polystyrene boards fall apart, they release thousands of harmful micro-polystyrene balls into the ocean.

Keep Britain Tidy estimates there are more than 16,000 low quality polystyrene boards discarded on UK beaches every year.

Surf Wood for Good hopes their scheme will reduce this number.

The wooden bodyboards are much less breakable than plastic ones.

The boards can be pricey, so the company has teamed up with coastal shops to provide rental boards completely free of charge.

Jamie Johnstone came up with the initiative. He said: "There are plenty of well-made, well constructed plastic bodyboards which people can use.

"But what we tend to find is a lot of the cheaper supermarket bodyboards - the snappers we call them - they cost £20 and under made of cheap polystyrene are not fit for purpose.

Jamie Johnstone set up the scheme to help combat plastic pollution.

"People buy them for a day on the beach and will often find they'll snap and end up getting discarded in the bins at the end of the day," he added.

The wooden boards are also used by local surfing schools around the Cornish coast, and Johnstone hopes other surf schools across the UK will pick them up.

Dale Unnuk runs a surf school on Crantock Beach and offers the boards to his clients.

"If the boards didn't work well we wouldn't be using them," he said.

"It's great to back the plastic initiative but at the end of the day they do have to work, and they are, they're great fun boards, they work well and people enjoy them."

A truckload of plastic enters the ocean every minute, according to Greenpeace.

Families in Cornwall told ITV News the boards give them a way to enjoy the Cornish coast while also being sustainable.

Abi Wilson has two sons who are keen bodyboarders. She said: "I've seen them in loads of shops and they look brilliant and we were trying to use less plastic and we were interested in one but they're quite expensive.

"So when we saw them available to hire and borrow here we thought we'd give it a go before we buy one."