Sustainable Surfing Coalition

I was stoked to hear that Balikbayod’s trip to Siargao Island in the Phillippines in November was a resounding success. They have created two “surfboard libraries” on the island, giving access to surfboards to kids who probably never dreamed they’d have the opportunity to surf anything but a pro’s broken stick. (Did we mention Cloud 9 is on Siargao? Those are some stoked groms!) And we’re happy to have Rerip boards collected at Aqua Surf Shop here in San Francisco be part of this last trip, with many more board shipments to follow.

Check out the two photos below to see the Balikbayod staff and kids with some of the Rerip surfboards already donated to Balikbayod.

Balikbayod team rocking a Rerip surfboard in Siargao.

The whole group rocking Balikbayod boards on Siargao. Click the photo to go to the Balikbayod website to learn more about the program.

The Natural Resources Defense Council is active in many areas regarding protection of the environment, and have an entire active program devoted solely to reviving the oceans. Part of their work is the production of videos (one of which, about ocean acidification, I have posted before) which are always informative and well-produced.

I came across this interesting video about California’s Marine Protected Areas recently. While it focuses on marine protected areas on the central coast of the state (specifically, the Gulf of the Farallones) the video highlights how such marine protected areas a crucial component of any protection of the ocean. There is some great footage of local wildlife, from tide pools to kelp forests– if you look carefully over the commentator’s shoulder, in one scene you can even see a glimpse of Ocean Beach looking glassy, head high, and fun.

When I was at school at UC Berkeley I was fortunate enough to be exposed to many excellent classes and people in the Engineers and Business for Sustainability (EBS) program. The program was excellent, and I hope it continues its success into the future.

We understand how important education is at the SSC (after all, it is part of our mission statement), and I am glad that the Luce Foundation has helped to fund the EBS program over the years to help educate students like myself. I hope that educational programs like this one continue not just at UC Berkeley, but at other colleges around the world.

The video here highlights what the Luce Foundation considered the two best cases examples of sustainable projects that have come out of the EBS program; sustainable housing design for the Pinoleville-Pomo Nation, and my own work with the Sustainable Surfing Coalition (I start about 6 minutes in). Check it out!

BERKELEY: Sustainability in Products & Practice from Watson Institute on Vimeo.

I love clicking around on Dane Reynold’s blog (Marine Layer Productions); lots of great surf videos and funny commentary. I was surprised to see a short piece on Channel Islands surfboard deck pads, which Dane states in this post are made from scraps of ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) which are “recycled” from the factory floor.

This type of material reprocessing is done very commonly with plastic products of nearly any type. For each product which is manufactured, there is a certain amount of “scrap” material that ends up on the factory floor after manufacturing; this is true, whether it be a plastic bag or a surfboard deck pad. These are the odd corners and edges which are trimmed off to get the final desired shape of the product. These odds and ends are then mixed in with the next “batch” and end up in another product.

This process is not usually considered “recycling”, as the scrap material never leaves the factory; more often it is called “internal re-processing.” True “recycling” usually assumes post-consumer waste is being recycled and made into the product.

In any case, it is good practice from both a cost and environmental standpoint, as in the end it reduces the amount of material needed to make every surfboard deck pad.

From the Marine Layer Productions website.

I poked around a bit and while it looks like Channel Islands is not currently offering any deck pads billed as “recycled,” I found a few companies claiming “recycled deck pads,” including On a Mission and Sticky Bumps.

What is my recommendation for any surfer looking for “recycled” deck pads? Do your homework on the product before buying. Many of these “recycled” deck pads might be made from the same process as the Channel Islands ones; not true post-consumer recycling, just internal re-processing which reduces the amount of material waste. This is still a good thing from an environmental perspective, but it’s important to not get those two processes confused.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the best way to present the environmental impacts arising from polyurethane foam production. I have re-organized this page to highlight the direct and indirect impact associated with P/U foam production:

• Direct impacts:
  • Worker exposures to toxic chemicals (TDI)
  • Plastics pollution from foam waste which does not go to landfill
  • Toxic water pollution (not occurring in the United States; only possible in overseas production)
  • Toxic air pollution (also occurring as an indirect impact)
• Indirect impacts:
  • Global climate change
  • Ocean acidification
  • Smog formation
  • Regional acidification (acid rain)
  • Mercury pollution in the ocean
  • Impacts from the extraction of oil and natural gas

Read more at the post here.

While carbon dioxide (CO2) may be the best-known of the greenhouse gases contributing to climate change, it is one the most difficult to prevent from entering the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels, the source of the vast majority of energy used for human society since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, leads directly to emissions of CO2 which arise from a fundamental chemical reaction which cannot be changed. Furthermore, CO2 lasts in the atmosphere for centuries; once it is up, it won’t come down, not for well over a human lifetime.

But two other chemicals which contribute to climate change quite significantly are much easier to control than CO2. Methane and black carbon together account for as much as 40% of the warming experienced on the Earth’s surface today (measured by radiative forcing), and are the second and third most important warming gases after CO2. Emissions of these two are not tied directly to combustion of fossil fuels, and furthermore, they only stay in the atmosphere for very short periods of time compared to CO2 (about 10 years for methane, and just one or two months for black carbon). Limiting their emissions today means that a significant portion of the Earth’s warming can be reduced relatively quickly.

Black carbon emissions (left) are the by-product of combustion, of fossil fuels and other substances. Unlike CO2, black carbon emissions from combustion can be reduced to practically zero through use of appropriate technology. Methane emissions come in large part from agriculture, such as rice cultivation (center) and from cows (right). “Ruminants”– cows– are the largest source of methane emissions caused by humans.

Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like a funny little contest on a funny little wave…a perfect lefthander but also kind of soft and mushy. It could be a whole lot worse. Even being generous, it doesn’t compare to Hawai’i or California these past few weeks though.

A neat new utility offered by the US Environmental Protection Agency is an online mapper of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas throughout the country. This is the first step in what will eventually (hopefully) become regulations limiting the emissions. For now, the tool is useful to find out which single facilities are emitting in your neighborhood.

Check out the GHG emitter map here.

A commonly discussed threat to the ocean is the accumulation of plastics which do not biodegrade for decades or centuries (if ever). Now SustainableSurf and the Surfrider Foundation have teamed up to recycle a certain type of plastic (EPS) into nothing else but brand-new surfboards with the Waste to Waves project. Pretty neat!

Click here to learn about the process (straight from the Waste to Waves website).

In two previous articles, I described the materials used in a surfboard, and the life cycle steps needed to create these materials. This article is the first in a series where I will describe in detail the environmental impacts arising from the production, use, and disposal of the three main components used in 85% of surfboards in the water today; polyurethane (P/U) foam blanks, unsaturated polyester resin (UPR), and fiberglass. Anyone who has ever shaped a surfboard– or even just seen one broken in half or done some ding repair– will be familiar with these materials as being the three primary constituents in a conventional surfboard.

This will not be a full-fledged life cycle assessment, but rather a “hot spot” analysis, identifying the very worst parts of surfboard production.

Environmental Impacts from Polyurethane (P/U) Foam Blanks

Polyurethane foam blanks, which have not yet been manufactured into finished surfboards.

The “blank” forms the shape of the surfboard; these are bought by surfboard shapers in “uncut” standard dimensions before being shaped to the precise dimensions of a final surfboard. (There are today many companies producing these “uncut” blanks; you can see some examples of these “uncut” P/U foam blanks for purchase at the USBlanks website.)

By the time the shaper has received these blanks, polyurethane is basically an “inert” material– containing few, if any, significantly toxic chemicals. Most (but not all) of the worst impacts to the environment and human health occur “upstream”, during the manufacture of the P/U foam, which is made from two chemicals, polyols and toluene diisocyanate (TDI). The impacts below are those that are identified to arise from the manufacture of P/U foam from these materials.

Update: The number of impacts listed here is overwhelming; I have re-framed the discussion to separate impacts into two classes, depending on where they occur:

• Direct impacts. These occur at the factory producing the polyurethane foam blanks. They include all those impacts related to the production of polyurethane from polyols and TDI. They include:
  • Worker exposures to toxic chemicals (TDI)
  • Plastics pollution from foam waste which does not go to landfill
  • Toxic water pollution (not occurring in the United States; only possible in overseas production)
  • Toxic air pollution (also occurring as an indirect impact)
• Indirect impacts. These occur as a result of polyurethane foam production, but do not occur at the factory. There are three main causes: (1) consumption of electricity at the polyurethane foam factory, resulting in dramatic impacts from combustion of fossil fuels at power plants which are usually far from the factory; (2) production of the polyols, TDI, and other materials used at the factory, which if traced “upstream” far enough, ends in the extraction and refining of oil and natural gas; and (3) transportation of the various materials from place to place, by truck, rail, or ship. Indirect impacts include:
  • Global climate change
  • Ocean acidification
  • Smog formation
  • Regional acidification (acid rain)
  • Mercury pollution in the ocean
  • Impacts from the extraction of oil and natural gas Read the rest of this entry »