Are These The 6 Best Eco-Friendly Surfboards?

Ever since hosting the Sustainable Surf Symposium, last fall, Daydream and Sea Trees have been working together on projects like these to elevate the profile of eco-boards. Daydream is now the first official surf shop partner of the nonprofit and pledges to plant one Sea Tree for each surfboard sold at the shop. 

We caught up with Kyle to hear more about his thoughts on the Verdure, a new construction system utilizing cork, wood, and plant-based resins resulting in an incredible looking finished product. Verdure boards have recently made their way under the feet of surfers like Steph Gilmore, Tom Curren, Torren Matryn, and Dave Rastovich.

“The Verdure is an architectural marvel, the combination of disciplines that come together to make one of these boards is so unique and the tolerances are so narrow, there's no room for error. The design of the Hybrid Twin is definitely built for good surf. I'm just an average surfer but to me this is a relatively high performance board compared to the vast array of alternative surfboards that exist out there. It felt like it just wanted a steep, powerful wave with a nice lip to hit. For me, the waves we were surfing this day were just barely on the cusp of satisfactory for this board but it was enough to get a glimpse into how it would light up in "real" waves. The upright twins are super loose but hold well in the critical part of a wave, the board felt like it had more flex than a standard poly/eps board and you could feel it spring off the bottom in a really unique way.”

We also asked him about the Funner Surf Craft Mid Twin, a zero-waste board made with 3D printed parabolic rails, a hollow core, and wood skins.

“The Funner Mid Twin was the yin to the Verdure's yang. Its volume was exaggerated by the hollow construction which gave it a crazy amount of floatation. It was also 6'8" so it was a whole head taller than the rest of the boards we were demoing that day. The best way I could describe it is: this is the board you want to be on after you just surfed your Verdure for two hours. It felt like a Cadillac as it sailed across the water allowing you to pick off waves that were barely breaking and glide through soft sections with the greatest of ease. It was awesome watching Tyler surf this board because he was really ripping turns and pushing it more than Maverick or myself ventured to. I was really impressed at the versatility of this board, it made us all want to surf for another two hours even as the winds were ramping up.”

Here's the full breakdown of each of the boards from Daydream:

5'6 Missing Link "Cold Slice"

Bobby Wood runs the Monterey based surfboard production facility Missing Link Manufacturing and shapes boards under the same label. This board may come across as one made of the standard construction but if you look closely at the deck, you’ll notice that it’s not paint giving it that tan color. As a matter of fact, this board is glassed with a biobased resin and flax cloth, it’s the natural fibers that give this board its unique appearance.

5'10 Verdure "Hybrid Twin"

At a mere glance, you can tell something is different about this board's construction and you’re totally correct. The first notice is that there’s no resin! The exterior of Verdure’s boards consist of a cork deck and a paulownia wood bottom stained and finished with a dusting of furniture wax. Albeit there is a small application of interior resin as a binding agent to allow its EPS core to bind to its exterior shell of beauty. The way this board feels in your arms is shocking, first by how light it feels as well as the craftsmanship that one has to possess in order to have all these unique ingredients line up just right. Needless to say, the Verdure was a crowd favorite that day by everyone who rode it as well as other folks in the line up that wanted to get a look at it.

6'8 Funner "Mid Twin"

If Tom Blake was still alive, this style of hollow surfboard construction modified with some new tech would probably be a rabbit hole he’d venture down. Parabolic rails are designed and 3D printed from 100% recycled PETG to make up the outline of the board. It’s then skinned with paulownia wood for the deck and bottom. Basalt cloth and plant based epoxy coats the rails and interior lining of the hollow board while the exterior gets an infusion of plant based oils that smell incredible and help repel water.

5'8 Locus Asym "Mini Simmons"

Tyler Hopkins is a Santa Cruz based shaper that has committed to glassing all of his boards using biobased resins under this surfboard label, Locus. He built this beautiful asymmetric surfboard and added glass-on fins he custom made by repurposing wooden paint brush handles as the base for laying up these fins. The upcycled fins and board are glassed with a biobased resin.

5'6 Bosiny "Comet"

Bosiny consists of two friends who shape high performance, full wood, hollow construction surfboards out of a shaping bay that runs off solar energy in the UK… How does it get better than that? There’s videos of surfers blast airs all over their website and instagram and the boards are apparently unbreakable. These boards use paulownia wood for their hollow interior construction as well as the exterior deck and bottom. They’re glassed with plant based biobased resin making them extremely durable with the goal of lasting a lifetime.

5'10 Daniel Jones "Agave Quad"

Legendary North Shore board builder Daniel Jones teamed up with Agave Brothers to get his hands on an ultra light agave blank to shape this board out of. The blank is made out of the stock of massive Kenyan agave plants. Similar to how lumber is milled from trees, the agave stocks are cut down and milled into long planks that are then glued together to form a 100% plant based surfboard blank that is light and super strong. This board had an energetic flex that allowed it to spring from turn to turn. These blanks are just recently available to shapers on a larger scale and we expect to see a lot more agave boards in the water one day soon.

If you’re interested in hearing more about eco-boards, stay tuned as we will be profiling more board builders and their innovative creations over the coming months.