Wavestorms don’t scream “eco-friendly,” but they produce less carbon over their lifecycle than poly or epoxy surfboards. Photo: Stan Moniz.
Editor’s Note:This feature was possible thanks to industry information provided by AGIT Global.
Foam surfboards have been a part of surf culture and thought for a long time. Some people love them because they’re hard, if not impossible, to ding, can be used by anyone from beginner to pro, and inject an element of fun into a sport that we have a tendency to take way too seriously. On the other end of things, some people hate foam boards because they’re mass-produced, make surfing “easier,” and, so the story goes, are less environmentally friendly than traditional boards. That last claim may be true. However, it might hold less water that a leaked fiberglass board. Recent studies have shown that fiberglass surfboards are not environmentally friendly. There is a nearly 50% reduction in carbon emissions for an eight-foot soft-top (53 lbs CO2), compared to a 6-foot polyester foam and resin board (6 lbs CO2).
An ecoboard’s lifecycle analysis is compared to a traditional surfboard made of poly/fiberglass. Photo by Sustainable Surf.
The ECOBOARD ProjectSustainable Surf founded a new company called. In 2012, they started. In the process, they produced the “Study of the ECOBOARD lifecycle,” which shows that for every standard polyester shortboard that is made, about 105 pounds of CO2 is emitted in the “lifecycle” process from raw material acquisition to transportation to the surf shop. The foam and resin used to make traditional poly/fiberglass surfboards had the greatest carbon impact. Only five per cent of that carbon footprint came from the fiberglass. This shows how sustainable alternatives are possible for these materials, which are arguably the most difficult to replace. “Eco” surfboard manufacturers who use alternatives to fiberglass like hemp or flax are a dime-a-dozen at this point, but the above lifecycle study shows that if they want to make a meaningful impact they’ll need to look at their foam and resin as well.
AGIT Global performed a lifecycle study at Wavestorm facilities in Taiwan. Bureau Veritas verified numbers. Photo by AGIT Global.
However, one of the biggest takeaways from this study is that mass production, often seen as producing “soulless” boards and squeezing out the “little guy” of traditional surfboard handshapers and manufacturers is doing the environment a pretty big service at the same time. AGIT Global, the parent company to AGIT, has just released some numbers. Wavestorm, independently verified by an inspection and certification firm Bureau VeritasFull documents linked here and there show that an eight-foot Wavestorm made in Nantou Taiwan only produces approximately 24.12 kgs of CO2 or 53.18 pounds. That’s less than half as much CO2 as a six-foot shortboard, for a board that’s eight feet long and almost three-times the literage (assuming an average of 30 liters for a six-foot shortboard, an eight-foot Wavestorm has 86 liters of volume). This is quite impressive.
That being said, straight-up, pound-for-pound, who-produces-the-most-carbon doesn’t tell the full story when it comes to eco-friendliness. There’s the question of how long a board might last before you need to get a new one, whether or not it will shed or flake toxic chemicals into the environment, or if there’s any other consumables necessary to keep it maintained (like resin for fixing dings). These are more difficult to quantify but the carbon comparison still shows that foam boards might not be so harmful to the environment.
Most people surf for fun. Photo: Stan Moniz.
Surprisingly both fiberglass and foam board studies have shown that transportation is only a small portion of the carbon footprint. This dispels yet another myth about overseas surfboards, or foam boards, being more carbon-intensive because they need to travel farther. “Getting your board from your shaper to your favorite surf shop is a relatively small part of the boards total carbon footprint,” WritesSustainable Surf. “With this in mind, the biggest environmental gains for any type of surfboard will be made by choosing more sustainable materials, minimizing waste from manufacturing and reducing fossil fuel energy use in production.” In short, while there’s nothing wrong with going to your local shaper, just don’t think you’re doing the environment a service at the same time by avoiding overseas purchases. If you’re looking to make a green purchase on a surfboard, you should do your research and be prepared to pay more. If saving the world was cheap, we’d have done it already.
We may be holding ourselves back as surfers because we are so fond of traditional shapes and methods of building our boards. If we truly want to be as eco-friendly as we can be, we need to step away from traditional poly boards, no matter how “high-performance” they might be, and find different ways to obtain the same characteristics in our surfboards. Or maybe even just settle for “less” performance, and remember that the majority of us are surfing for fun, after all.