It’s 5 am and, with a glimmer of sunlight breaking through, you paddle out to your favourite surf break. Before you know it, there’s a clean five-foot set rolling your way and without thinking you get in the perfect position for your first wave of the day. At the last moment, it looks like the reef break is going to get the best of the wave and that friendly five-footer has jacked up to a healthy 8-10 feet. Unfortunately your miscalculations paid their price and, upon your drop-in attempt, you jump off the lip into the white water washing machine while your trusty 6’2″ thruster folds in half to more likely resemble the tortilla of a carne asada taco.
After a scramble back to shore, you pack the pieces of your trusty friend into the back of your veggie-oil-burning diesel van where you begin pondering the next pricey board purchase. As you shut the boot, you notice your Environmentalists Do It for Future Generations bumper sticker and begin to ponder the question: Which type of surfboard is the best option for the environment?
Any surfer will tell you that surfing is one of the purest ways to engage with the natural environment. There are approximately 300,000 surfers in Australia alone and if you allocate just one surfboard per surfer you are talking about 1,200 tonnes of foam, fiberglass, epoxies and resins. So how bad is this stuff really and how can you make sure that you are choosing the best option for the environment? Let’s look at the life cycle of two different boards to shed some light on these important questions. The LCA Surfboard Solution: Fiberglass vs. Epoxy is an article on life cycle assessment and ecopoints (also published in Green Pages) by Ben Kneppers, LCA Practitioner at Edge Environment Pty Ltd.