Many of the cigarette butts pressed into a working surfboard that has become a traveling symbol of ocean activism were plucked from the sand here, along local beaches where the litter proved all too easy to find.
That board is the centerpiece of "The Cigarette Surfboard," a feature documentary that follows Venice and Santa Monica native Taylor Lane as he builds a functional surfboard from 10,000 cigarette butts collected off California beaches. The film begins a two-week online premiere Sept. 15, timed to International Coastal Cleanup Day on Sept. 19.
For Lane, who graduated from Santa Monica High School 15 years ago, the coastline was both inspiration and raw material. He said gathering the butts was, unexpectedly, the least difficult part of the build.
"We had thousands of butts come off Santa Monica beaches, and surprisingly, this was the easiest part of building the boards due to how ubiquitous cigarette butt litter is on our beaches, unfortunately," Lane said.
He credited a local partner for the effort. "We worked heavily with local organization Heal The Bay to organize these ciggy butt cleanups to collect butts for our boards," Lane said. "We estimate that we collected about 100,000 cigarette butts off California beaches and processed them into surfboards."
The film has already reached local audiences. "We did a screening at The Waterfront (in Venice) back in November of 2025 (hosted by Venice Surfing Association), but we are thrilled to bring it to audiences around the world with our Online Premiere launching September 15th," Lane said.
He framed the project as a homecoming with wider reach. "As a Venice/Santa Monica native, it's been an incredible opportunity to bring this issue to the attention of others, including the policymakers in Santa Cruz who passed the first policy in the nation to ban the sale of single-use cigarette filters," Lane said.
Cigarette butts are the most littered item in the world and the No. 1 item picked up off U.S. beaches, according to the filmmakers, who note that many people do not realize the filters are made of plastic.
Turning that trash into a rideable board took trial and error. "The first Ciggy Board actually didn't work, so we learned from those failures and made ones that did," Lane said. "We worked with volunteers to collect the butts off the beach, and found a way to also work alongside professional surfboard shapers that mentored us through the process to make the boards lighter, stronger and more functional than our first iterations. From there, the project lit up!"
The idea took shape in 2017, when Lane entered a contest run by the surf brand Vissla and the Surfrider Foundation that challenges people to build surf craft from upcycled materials. Filmmaker Ben Judkins, who met Lane through the Santa Cruz surfing community in 2014, said he started shooting immediately.
"I knew this was a story worth following, and began filming from the very first butt," Judkins said. "I was excited to explore how surfing as a medium could help tell a universal story of people standing up for the health of the ocean and planet — but I had no idea how this story would unfold."
Judkins, who directed the roughly 93-minute film and completed it in 2024, said he wanted to avoid the despair common to environmental documentaries.
"We set out to make a film that was solution-driven, with an optimistic outlook for the future of our planet, and to ultimately be able to inspire people to take action," Judkins said. He described the biggest lesson of the project as "how anyone — no matter who you are — truly has the capacity to make positive changes in their personal life and local community."
He was blunt about the tone he was after: "The Cigarette Surfboard is fun, at times funny, and blends surf film with environmental documentary," Judkins said. "For surfers and non-surfers alike, it'll fire you up, make you laugh, while still taking on a big, serious issue."
The online premiere runs Sept. 15-27 and is available to rent at watch.eventive.org/thecigarettesurfboard. Ticket holders can join live, virtual question-and-answer sessions with professional surfers and ocean activists featured in the film, including chemist Cliff Kapono of Hawaii, activist Hannah Bennett of Fiji, regenerative farmer Fergal Smith of Ireland, researcher Easkey Britton of Ireland and Surfers Against Sewage co-founder Chris Hines of the United Kingdom.
Since its completion, the film has screened 60 times at festivals across 12 countries and 16 states, winning 16 awards, including audience honors at the Bend and Cambridge film festivals. The filmmakers also say the board helped push a first-in-the-nation policy: the County of Santa Cruz, the city of Santa Cruz and the city of Capitola have moved to ban the sale of single-use cigarette filters, with the ordinances set to take effect in 2027.
"These are the first laws of their kind," Judkins said, "and proof that local action can help change the world."