Environmentally friendly production of windsurfboards

Our boards, these innocent-looking fun boards, are composed almost exclusively of crude oil *. The production is not sustainable, and the boards can hardly be recycled. Some manufacturers made a significant contribution by talking to us openly about our analysis. What are the facts? Is there a way out?

1.) No Oil?
With the decision to buy a product, usually quality, durability and the price are a decisive factor. Aspects of health and sustainability often play only a minor role. Who thinks of crude oil when purchasing a windsurfing board?

On the other hand, the production and processing of oil is regarded with a critical eye. Catastrophes such as the accident in the Gulf of Mexico, accidents during transport or the exploitation of new wells outside your own front door trigger massive protest movements. Currently, on the Canaries many surfers and windsurfers are protesting against oil drilling because they fear for their spots and nature. Also fracking under our own feet is being viewed rather critically. All this is understandable.

2.) There's a catch
However, there's a big snag. Without oil, virtually nothing works today, neither in windsurfing or otherwise. And thus, increasingly sophisticated and often even riskier methods are being used to produce oil, because our oil supply is limited. Almost all parts of windsurfing equipment consist, as with nearly all other types of plastic, fundamentally of petroleum.

The manufacturing process is complex: after the extraction, crude oil is further processed in refineries and split up there into individual components such as ethylene or benzene, which are used for the production of plastics.

From the dehydrogenation of ethyl benzene styrene is obtained, and from this polystyrene, the common material for the core of a board. PVC, which is also found in many sandwich boards, is obtained from ethene by adding chlorine and plasticizers. The carbon fiber is usually made from petroleum components.

And also the resin, which bonds together the various components of a surf boards, is usually based on petroleum. Many of the substances used in the manufacture are individually, highly toxic.

3.) Surfing on Oil, without Recycling
The production of the individual ingredients is therefore, at least from an environmental perspective, and putting it mildly, questionable. With this utilization we harm our planet in many ways.

The basic ingredients of a board are baked into a sandwich that will not rot in hundreds of years and is not recyclable, even at a reasonable cost **. Any wood used will not alter this situation because one can barely separate the resin bonded components at all.

In addition, the products, as is quite often the case today are transported halfway around the world on ships that burn very dirty fuel. A very different health aspect: we do not know whether or which (toxic) substances such a board emits after manufacture. This topic has therefore been left out of this article.

4.) No finger-wagging
This is not supposed to be a moral sermon. It is only a depiction of the current state of the production chain.

But this production method is not carved in stone. It can change. A few weeks ago, in the first part of the technical dossier "will the revolution in board construction come?” we presented an alternative, environmentally friendly production method for the cores of our boards.

And there are many more technologies available today that offer replacement. Fibres from Jute or flax are in production and have been sucessfully tested even in blades for wind turbines.

„I am very concerned about where our consumer society will lead us and our brand unfortunately plays along with the game in many respects.“

Svein Rasmussen - Starboard

5.) The survey among the manufacturers
With such exciting developments in the background, in early September we began with questioning the manufacturers of windsurfing boards.

We wanted to know which materials are used in production and in addition, we asked about the disposal of production residues and posed the question: "Are you following any concrete plans to make production more environmentally friendly? And if so, which? "

The answers differed greatly. A very large manufacturer informed us by e-mail that they do not wish to give any information. Others simply remained silent. And again others continually delayed replying. They will certainly have their good reasons for this. So let us give precedence to those who actually responded.

6.) Only what is ordered is produced

The heading sounds simple, but it packs a punch. Many brands produce at Cobra in Thailand and Cobra manufactures the boards according to the specifications of the brands.

And to date, the production has been dictated by market-specific parameters such as price and durability.

Svein Rasmussen from Starboard put it in a nutshell quite responsibly as follows: "The customers create demand with OEM manufacturers , so the responsibility lies with the brands and how they design the products to be built."

This also means: Only those who demand eco-friendly, planet-protective board construction will get it. In the end, this is also the responsibility of the final customer, who should demand this of the brands if they really want it.

Initial signs of improvement, albeit only to a small extent, can be observed. Wood or corkare being processed, and PVC is then sometimes omitted.

The issue is definitely not simple. Slightly rising production costs become evident in the sharp increase in retail prices, Craig Gertenbach from Fanatic remarks. (But do the prices really have to increase? Especially in the bio composite area, the cheap raw materials can sometimes originate from waste products from the agricultural industry.)

For an industry that is not exactly flourishing anyway, falling sales figures can be quite dangerous. If a manufacturer invests in environmentally friendly production and the customers do not buy this product, then he is the looser.

Such a dampener for innovation in respect to a sustainable, environmentally friendly production could be avoided more easily if the manufacturers would co-operate. In windsurfing this possibility is logical as almost all brands have their boards produced by only one company...

Also, the durability is an important point. Craig Gertenbach, Svein Rasmussen and Patrik Diethelm think that the currently high quality and very durable boards are a plus because fewer boards are being produced and transported around the earth. But the production chain will still not become more sustainable and safer for our planet because of this.

Other, not so large manufacturers such as Günther Lorch, try to produce as environmentally friendly as possible but on a smaller scale. Extraction systems or kilns are optimized or the lighting in the production hall is exchanged.

Nevertheless, these approaches do not suffice. Svein Rasmussen says: "I am very concerned about where our consumer society will lead us and our brand unfortunately plays along with the game in many respects." ***

Footnotes:
* Strictly speaking, the boards are constructed from products derived from petroleum. Epoxy for example, can also be obtained from carbon won from biomass. At the time of the survey, none of the brands we surveyed utilized this product, and none of them indicated that they have this planned. (A few days ago, one manufacturer confirmed that together with a producer of organic epoxy, they have started to optimize resin for use in windsurfing boards.)

** Naturally, a board will eventually rot. However, since this takes hundreds of years, none of us will ever experience such a decomposition process.

*** Many will certainly think: "The others are much worse than we surfers. The small windsurfing industry doesn’t do much harm." – That is correct, in other branches environmental awareness is far less existent. However, we are not finger-wagging at others in this case, but are rather trying to keep our own house in order.

Links:
Compositerevolution in Great Britain produces Bio Fibers suitable for board production.
www.compositesevolution.com

Ecovativedesign produces a replacement for EPS made from mycelium and agricultural waste.
www.ecovativedesign.com

Bio Resins
http://www.entropyresins.eu

7.) The opportunity
These are clear and courageous words and it is a great opportunity. In the case of starboards for example, behind closed doors, products are increasingly being developed with the aim towards more environmental friendliness.

Even if a brand initiates a development and can initially exclusively utilize this technology at Cobra, usually after about two years, it is available to the other manufacturers. In windsurfing this means: If a brand makes headway, many other brands can benefit from this in the end. At the same time, a manufacturer that sells a good board and a good conscience at a good price can certainly secure a competitive lead in the market.

But the final customers are also an important factor in the process. They can demand appropriate action only if they know how they are supporting a production chain with their purchase and understand the consequences for the environment. But this means more transparency on the part of the manufacturer. Many Brands reacted in a very tight-lipped manner to our questions about the production. One manufacturer admitted that they do not precisely know which materials were exactly built into the boards. That is absolutely unacceptable!

8.) The client decides
In the end, we are back to the beginning of the story. The protest against oil production is like a headache tablet. It treats the symptoms, but not the cause. If consumers would more vehemently express their views on the pursuit of alternative production methods, certainly quite a lot would change, and much faster. In this case, windsurfing mirrors the other industries. The cause of an environmental problem only partially lies with the manufacturers. Without consumers, production processes would not even be put into practice in our free market economy. Therefore, part of the responsibility lies with the customer.

Here we have only focused on the production of the boards. Those who take a closer look at the other components of their equipment will encounter similar problems.

In the next few years, customers will certainly have the opportunity to help the manufacturers to follow and adopt a more environmentally friendly strategy by trying to reward these efforts with a decision to purchase, respectively, to demand this strategy from the manufacturer.

Those who do not support these efforts in the windsurfing business or elsewhere, should in that case also accept the oil production and the consequences of its use outside their own front door or even physically to their own body. And who wants that?

This topic provides material for interesting discussions. For questions, suggestions or comments, we have set up this area in the DAILY DOSE forum.

A german Version of that story is available here.