Surf & Sustainability: The Environmental Cost of the Sport We Love
Welcome to the first edition of Indorider Surf & Sustainability — a monthly look at how surfing can better align with the health of our planet.
On the surface, surfing feels like the ultimate sustainable sport. No stadiums, no fuel, no machines — just waves, a board, and the ocean. But the reality is more complicated than that. Behind every ride is an environmental cost that most surfers never see.
The wetsuit keeping you warm, the board under your feet, the T-shirt from your favourite surf brand — they're all products of an industry still deeply rooted in petroleum, plastics, and waste. If we're serious about protecting the ocean, we need to be honest about what it takes to surf it.
The Problem with Wetsuits
Neoprene — the material inside almost every wetsuit on the market — is made from petroleum. Its production is energy-intensive, generating significant CO₂ emissions before the suit ever reaches a surf shop. And at the end of its life, neoprene doesn't biodegrade. It sits in landfill, slowly breaking down into microplastics that eventually find their way back into the ocean.
Some brands are starting to work with plant-based neoprene alternatives, made from limestone or natural rubber. They're not yet mainstream, and they're not cheap — but they exist, and they work. The surf wetsuit of the future doesn't have to be built on oil.
The Problem with Surf Apparel
Surf culture has long been tangled up in fast fashion. Cheap T-shirts printed with plastisol inks — containing PVC and phthalates — end up in landfill long after the trend has faded. The board shorts worn for one season, the rash vest bought on holiday, the hoodie that didn't survive its first wash: all of it adds up.
The materials tell a similar story. Conventional cotton strains ecosystems with pesticide use and staggering water consumption. Polyester — the fabric in most surf apparel — is made from fossil fuels and sheds microplastic fibres every time it's washed. Those fibres pass through water treatment systems and end up in the ocean.
The alternative already exists. Organic cotton, grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilisers, uses significantly less water and produces a far safer fabric. At Indorider, our apparel range is made from organic cotton — because the T-shirt you wear after a session shouldn't be undoing what you just enjoyed.
The Problem with Surfboards
This is where the numbers get uncomfortable.
Around 800,000 surfboards are manufactured globally every year. Approximately 750,000 of those rely on polyurethane foam, fibreglass, and petroleum-based resins — materials that are toxic to produce, difficult to recycle, and slow to break down. And when a board reaches the end of its life? Roughly 400,000 boards are discarded annually, most going straight to landfill.
Here's what that looks like in real terms. A single shortboard contains 3–4 kg of plastic. A longboard can contain up to 8 kg. When you run the numbers on boards discarded each year, that's somewhere between 1,600 and 3,200 tonnes of plastic waste annually — the equivalent of around 80 million 500ml plastic water bottles going to landfill every single year.
Let that sink in.
The surfboard industry has a waste problem it hasn't fully reckoned with yet. Some shapers and manufacturers are experimenting with bio-resin, recycled foam, and reclaimed wood — and those experiments are genuinely promising. But the majority of boards being made right now are still built the old way.
At Indorider, we make our handmade surfboards in Bali using traditional shaping techniques. We're not going to overstate our environmental credentials — a handmade board still uses fibreglass and resin. But a board made carefully, to order, for a specific person, is a board that gets looked after. It doesn't get ridden twice and relegated to a garage. The antidote to surfboard waste isn't just better materials — it's boards people actually care about.
The Problem with Surf Wax
Most surfers don't think about their wax at all. It's the most overlooked piece of kit in the bag, bought on autopilot, rubbed on without a second thought.
But conventional surf wax is made from paraffin — a petroleum byproduct. It degrades in seawater into microplastics. It contains synthetic dyes and fragrances that leach into the water. Every session with conventional wax is a small chemical contribution to the ocean you're surfing in.
Natural, biodegradable alternatives — like our 100% beeswax surf wax — perform just as well in most conditions and leave nothing harmful behind. It's one of the simplest swaps a surfer can make, and one of the most overlooked.
The Good News: Change Is Already Happening
None of this is cause for despair. The surf industry is changing — slowly, unevenly, but genuinely.
Innovators are rethinking wetsuit materials. Shapers are experimenting with sustainable construction. Apparel brands are moving toward organic and recycled fabrics. Surf wax companies are replacing paraffin with plant-based and natural alternatives. The World Surf League has made sustainability commitments. And a generation of surfers who grew up watching coral bleaching and plastic-choked lineups is demanding better from the brands they support.
The tools already exist. What's needed now is the willingness to use them — from producers, from governing bodies, and from us as consumers.
The Questions Worth Asking
Sustainable options often cost a little more. That's a real consideration, and it's worth being honest about rather than pretending it isn't. But it's also worth asking what we're comparing.
Does a ding or a scratch actually ruin a surfboard for most surfers — or can we ride it for longer and reduce waste? Does a sun-bleached board that looks old and shabby make any difference in the water? Is paying slightly more for durable, organic fabric really such a burden when it lasts three times as long as the cheap alternative? Does spending a little more on non-toxic surf wax actually matter when the tradeoff is protecting the ocean you're riding?
These are the questions worth sitting with. Not as guilt — surfing is one of the most joyful things a human being can do — but as a starting point for making better choices.
What Indorider Is Doing
We built Indorider on the belief that sustainable surfing isn't a compromise. It's just surfing done properly.
Our boards are handmade in Bali by craftspeople who take pride in what they build. Our wax is 100% natural beeswax. Our apparel uses organic cotton. Our fins are made from recycled plastic.
And we donate 5% of every single sale, every board, every block of wax, every T-shirt — to ocean and river clean-up charities in the UK and around the world. Because the people who love the ocean most should be among the people working hardest to protect it. You can read more about our approach on our sustainability page.
We're not perfect. No surf brand is. But we're trying to be honest about where we're at and deliberate about where we're going.
Join the Conversation
This is the first edition of our monthly Surf & Sustainability newsletter. Each month we'll go deeper on a different aspect of the surf industry's environmental impact — from fin production to surf travel, wetsuit disposal to the carbon footprint of surf contests.
If you're not already subscribed, sign up below. And if there's a sustainability topic in surfing you'd like us to look into, reach out — we're genuinely curious about what matters to you.
The ocean is worth fighting for. Let's talk about how.
Indorider is a UK-based sustainable surf brand. We make handcrafted surfboards in Bali, eco surf equipment, and organic cotton apparel — and we donate 5% of every sale to ocean and river clean-up charities.
