Carbon footprint of Surfing

You could plant a paulownia seed , watch it grow & soak up carbon dioxide - then when big enough , harvest it , make a surfboard & oil it with natural plant oils - just one little thing.

You could plant a paulownia seed , watch it grow & soak up carbon dioxide - then when big enough , harvest it , make a surfboard & oil it with natural plant oils - just one little thing.

farquarson wrote:

You could plant a paulownia seed , watch it grow & soak up carbon dioxide - then when big enough , harvest it , make a surfboard & oil it with natural plant oils - just one little thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWrylnmQ2M0

that clip is inspiring, what a craftsman

Someone should thread this into the climate change debate...... Floyd... It's gonna take you 7 to 10 years to grow that tree... Are you gonna body surf till then? bahahaha.... Make sure you're naked bodysurfing too... Afteral, most wetties are shipped in from China,as are board shorts.... Wonder what carbon footprint a shipping container full of wetsuits on a super freighter is...... At least naked body surfing you wont have to rub petro chemicals onto your stomach, or put a deckgrip on..... Hmmm... Deckgrips.... Wonder where they are made... Oh, and the packaging of the deckgrip.... Then there's the leg rope.... The board bag.. But you might have to use more sun screen body surfing, so bye bye coral reefs....
And no more go pro's!! Of course all that mining in Africa to make mobile phones, we'll have to scrap that... Can't check the swell on your app anymore... That's a no no.... Don't really need to if we're just body surfing anyway......
And those bloody 30 od pros flying around the globe, with boards, family, and wsl staff and cameras and stands, and promos, and adds for more stuff from chinese factories... Carbon criminals if you ask me...
pmsl.....

SCOCL

Oooppps Sorry Zen that's your call;)

SCOCL

hey sheepy, why the cynicism? you so hard these days you can't see the beauty of what that guy does and where he lives?

was thinking about this whole no kids, what am i or you or the guy next door doing to save the planet, carbon footprints blah blah ... ... i've resisted this whole argument but if i were to list all the things i do it would be a very long list but i'm still not happy, still trying to get it simple in every way ......... but is that the point? why compare individual efforts? .... i'd be happy(ier) if we were all just working and thinking in the same direction but most aren't for whatever reason ... making ends meet, the hussle of daily life, ignorance .... whatever ..... they say on the environment most people follow their politics, i know you don't, most do, perhaps we can hope for true political leadership .... one day

Actually Sheepdog the carbon footprint on something being shipped in from China or SE Asia or wherever has been proven to be extremely tiny i think it was less than 1% of the carbon footprint from memory on a surfboard.(will try to google it to double check)

As for the original post, you could look at your whole life if you want too like that, what are you going to do, lock yourself in your room with the light off waiting to die?

Sure reducing your carbon footprint is good, but it's all about balance.

indo-dreaming wrote:

Actually Sheepdog the carbon footprint on something being shipped in from China or SE Asia or wherever has been proven to be extremely tiny i think it was less than 1% of the carbon footprint from memory on a surfboard.(will try to google it to double check)

As for the original post, you could look at your whole life if you want too like that, what are you going to do, lock yourself in your room with the light off waiting to die?

Sure reducing your carbon footprint is good, but it's all about balance.

You're not big on sarcasm are you, Indo..... ;)

Sorry i was doing two thing at once and just skimmed over it..my bad.

just did some quick calcs....at a packaged size of 100L, a surfboard on a large 9000 container ship taking 9 days to pass from Beijing to Sydney will use 0.6L of diesel.

surprises me its so little.

68c Aust worth of diesel

floyd wrote:

hey sheepy, why the cynicism? you so hard these days you can't see the beauty of what that guy does and where he lives?

was thinking about this whole no kids, what am i or you or the guy next door doing to save the planet, carbon footprints blah blah ... ... i've resisted this whole argument but if i were to list all the things i do it would be a very long list but i'm still not happy, still trying to get it simple in every way ......... but is that the point? why compare individual efforts? .... i'd be happy(ier) if we were all just working and thinking in the same direction but most aren't for whatever reason ... making ends meet, the hussle of daily life, ignorance .... whatever ..... they say on the environment most people follow their politics, i know you don't, most do, perhaps we can hope for true political leadership .... one day

Floyd ,
I had this conversation with a guy a while ago . He was in the renewable game , and in a very strong greens/labor heartland . I said he'd be living the dream with hippy clients lining up to use his services . He turned blankly to me as said " they are the biggest hypocrites " ........
As I said to BB on multiple occasions , the people making the most noise are always pointing the finger at everyone else , rich people , governments , large corporates ....... Funnily enough they cry poor when it's their turn . Floyd you've said often that you are actively living in a minimalist state to prove your ideologue .
I sell a maximised life , but yes you'll pay for it .

maybe my brain isn't working good today but i'm not sure what you point is exactly southey perhaps you can further explain. for the record i don't live in a minimalist state and i'm not trying to prove anything let alone an ideology. on the environment and climate if you strip away all the baggage to me it comes down to common sense, we don't willingly trash our house, yard, car or workspace so why do it to the planet? but as a race we do it all the time from individuals to corporations. i don't understand it, perhaps some smarter brains here can explain why.

because the quickest way to get rich is to exploit weakness, cut corners, and most of all have a single minded objective. most corporations don't intentionally pollute, but rather pay little more attention than the law dictates because at the end of the day it don't pay at the bank.

humans have very successfully removed themselves as individuals from the natural environment. about the closest the average city slicker gets is the "air" they breathe and perhaps the occasional trip to the bush for a walk. so it becomes hard to intuitively feel impact to nature when you aint living near the problem. reading about it in the paper or watching tv isn't quite the same. its too disconnected.

Floyd .
I was pointing out that contrary to your belief that people's green credentials follow their political views .
It's paradoxical that the strongest area for the greens is from people living inner city Selbourne , it's concrete jungle and over abundant Cafe's eateries feeding up the plump and giving them their fix of
" koolaid " coffee .
Hipsters , you know those trendy hippy's .
" it's okay I'm in I touch with nature , I've got a beard , and I ride a fixie " ....
That was my point .
Some "redneck bogan that lives in the bush , what would he know about it " , I hear them glareing over their frappa, soy, skinny latte . "
Vegetarians , you only fully understand nature when you run with it , Imerge yourself in that primal urge and get involved in it's food chain .
Yourself Floyd . You've said how you've reduced consumption etc, I was pointing out that people don't necessarily need to minimize , as this entails doing less . Perhaps they need to do more , and I strictly mean things that are good . Plant trees , buy uncleared land and protect it . Better still buy barren land and re-establish it .
Instead the new religion is money , suburban property etcetera .

Yay southy, I'm backing your thinking(there goes your credibility:).

When are the greens going to come clean and admit they're main concern is gay rights and women's issues, political correctness is way more important to them than the environment.

happyasS wrote:

just did some quick calcs....at a packaged size of 100L, a surfboard on a large 9000 container ship taking 9 days to pass from Beijing to Sydney will use 0.6L of diesel.

surprises me its so little.

Can you explain how you calculated that?

Can you also ad into that crate, 1 x wetsuit, 1 x rashie, 1 x boardshorts, 1 x legrope, 1 x deck grip, 1 x board cover, 1 x booties, 1 x Hood, 1 x label t shirt, 1 x label sun glasses, 1 x spare fins system...

And on surfboard only, please ad making of blank/chemicals, trucking of blank to factory, making of fibre glass/resin + transport to factory, electricity to put together all components, trucking of finished product to chinese port, trucking of finished product from Australian port to store.

Same with all other "surfing goods" from China.

[quote=Sheepdog
Can you also ad into that crate, 1 x wetsuit, 1 x rashie, 1 x boardshorts, 1 x legrope, 1 x deck grip, 1 x board cover, 1 x booties, 1 x Hood, 1 x label t shirt, 1 x label sun glasses, 1 x spare fins system...

you missed the thongs, wax, repair kit, waterproof hat, fin key, tie down straps, waterproof watch, spf50 suncream, magazine on how to surf, and legrope cord... your not one of the crew here that believes their cord slows them down right? ;)

I found a couple of liner/ship websites that calculates tonnes per day of fuel for different size ships running at different speeds. I just randomly picked a big sucker capable of carrying 9000 twenty foot containers travelling at 20 knots cruising speed over that distance. that ship was said to use 150 tonnes of fuel per day at that speed. at 20 knots its a 9 day journey. then worked out that a 100L package (0.1m3) represents 0.0000005 of the total cargo capacity. then apportioned the total fuel for that package.

I under estimated it as I said a tonne of diesel was 1000L, but its actually slighty more. plus I assumed that all containers are perfectly packed (no wasted space) which is unrealistic. they do pack em pretty tight though as I found out having a job once emptying em in the middle of summer.

hey southey, it might be you and i aren't too far apart on this issue, much of what you said makes a lot of sense and i'm not going to argue against it .... but i do know if we are going to collectively (as a race) tackle this "disconnect with nature " that happyasS refers to we need the inner suburban hipster and the bushie onboard all moving in the same direction, doesn't matter how people move or get there so long as the direction is the same ... perhaps less judgement/thinking and more heart/doing by all.

There's 2 key issues:
1. Input costs aren't calculated correctly
2. The cost of negative externalities is not born in the product.

On 1. Natural resources are taken as next to free (licence and extraction costs only) instead of their replacement value so sucking up natural resources is the cheapest way to do business and always undercuts someone who say, grows an algae based plastic alternative for their product. Giving a free ride to some on shared/common resources at the expense of those who don't.

On 2. Negative externalities such as pollution and carbon footprint are not carried in the price of the product and are instead born by everyone else + the planet in general. Getting a basic carbon tax in place is the simplest way to address this market wide from a global warming perspective. Those that capture carbon then get a discount or cash back creating a market much closer to economic and social reality (not perfect though of course).

Carbon prices aren't huge in most goods and for the most part we'd probably barely notice but they will help level the playing field for non-polluters. Again, the price of the polluting good may go up but the cost to society that we will have to pay one day will go down. No free lunch in the way we run our economies now, just a delayed payment plan.

happyasS wrote:

[quote=Sheepdog
Can you also ad into that crate, 1 x wetsuit, 1 x rashie, 1 x boardshorts, 1 x legrope, 1 x deck grip, 1 x board cover, 1 x booties, 1 x Hood, 1 x label t shirt, 1 x label sun glasses, 1 x spare fins system...

you missed the thongs, wax, repair kit, waterproof hat, fin key, tie down straps, waterproof watch, spf50 suncream, magazine on how to surf, and legrope cord... your not one of the crew here that believes their cord slows them down right? ;)

I found a couple of liner/ship websites that calculates tonnes per day of fuel for different size ships running at different speeds. I just randomly picked a big sucker capable of carrying 9000 twenty foot containers travelling at 20 knots cruising speed over that distance. that ship was said to use 150 tonnes of fuel per day at that speed. at 20 knots its a 9 day journey. then worked out that a 100L package (0.1m3) represents 0.0000005 of the total cargo capacity. then apportioned the total fuel for that package.

I under estimated it as I said a tonne of diesel was 1000L, but its actually slighty more. plus I assumed that all containers are perfectly packed (no wasted space) which is unrealistic. they do pack em pretty tight though as I found out having a job once emptying em in the middle of summer.

Dunno where you got "9 days" from..... The average seem to be 15 days sailing time to Sydney;

http://www.theodmgroup.com/2010/09/17/calculating-container-shipping-time/

9 days... 15 days..... That's a heck of a difference..... I did see one site that offered 12 days sailing time.... Even that is 33% gross more than your 9 days.. Still a massive difference.

Happy.. A 10 000 t.e.u. freighter at normal cruising speed of 20k uses 175 ton of fuel per day.... Not 150.... Plus the vast majority of freighters are 19000 t.e.u. or bigger..... We're looking at at least 200 ton of fuel per day...

So your figures are dodgier than Joe Hockey's.....

There's sites that do the carbon footprint for you. Just input size and ports of dispatch/entry, etc.

google calculate carbon on shipping

don't forget ive used 20 knots as a reference speed for fuel purposes for a specific size ship. they may well go slower....fuel consumption is exponential the faster you go. so 15 days may well be correct for some ships but they are also likely to be more economical.

but if I use your link which says the main port is Hong Kong . the direct sailing distance seems to be about 5127nm or about 9600km. at 20knots or 37 km/h it will take 10.8 days. so its a little bit more fuel than 0.6L but not much.

Sheepdog wrote:

Happy.. A 10 000 t.e.u. freighter at normal cruising speed of 20k uses 175 ton of fuel per day.... Not 150.... Plus the vast majority of freighters are 19000 t.e.u. or bigger..... We're looking at at least 200 ton of fuel per day...

So your figures are dodgier than Joe Hockey's.....

yeah? and a 19000 t.e.u is carrying twice the load.....so your 200 tonnes of fuel is equivalent to 100 tonnes of fuel for my 9000 t.e.u

the bigger they get the more economical they get SD....your argument doesn't work

..... come back later to work it out.

happyasS wrote:

Sheepdog wrote:

Happy.. A 10 000 t.e.u. freighter at normal cruising speed of 20k uses 175 ton of fuel per day.... Not 150.... Plus the vast majority of freighters are 19000 t.e.u. or bigger..... We're looking at at least 200 ton of fuel per day...

So your figures are dodgier than Joe Hockey's.....

yeah? and a 19000 t.e.u is carrying twice the load.....so your 200 tonnes of fuel is equivalent to 100 tonnes of fuel for my 9000 t.e.u

the bigger they get the more economical they get SD....your argument doesn't work

But you "randomly picked a big sucker".... In what fuckn universe is a 9000 teu a "big sucker"? That's "post panamax", not even "new panamax".

Packed surfboard must be 5kg as they are packed together - a clean board is ~4kg right?

And when you say "the bigger they get the more economical they get SD", what exactly do you mean by that? Are we talking the price of a board or the carbon footprint?

And where did you get that 9 day calculation? From which post panamax port in china to which post panamax port in Australia?

following mk1's advice about co2, heres my calcs. (see link below)

a 10,000 teu ship will emit 10-40grams of carbon dioxide per tonne per km. (so im picking 20) a surfboard packed might be 5kg (going by mk1) so that surfboard is emitting 0.05 grams of carbon per km....or 1000 grams over a 10,000km journey? correct or not? someone help me

this is equal to a late model car driving about 10km (95g co2 per km). a modern 4 cylinder diesel will do about 6L per 100km. which is equivalent to 0.6L per that 10km journey. 0.6L?

http://www.worldshipping.org/industry-issues/environment/air-emissions/c...

sorry edit, "emitting 0.1 grams of carbon per km"

Sheepdog wrote:

And when you say "the bigger they get the more economical they get SD", what exactly do you mean by that? Are we talking the price of a board or the carbon footprint?
?

carbon footprint....the bigger they get the less diesel per unit weight cargo they use.

https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/fuel_consumption_c...

Negligible...

And you haven't addressed the making of the board.... The transport of the board to the boat, the pilot boats, oil and lubricants used in ship, some of which are incredibly processed, then transport to shop.

Oh.. And happy... Where does the board go after its use by date? Do any chemicals in the board whilst in landfill do damage to the atmosphere? I'm no chemist....

I just saw the avg aussie emits 16.5 tonne carbon per year.

At a price of $12p/tonne for offsets (is that right?) we are looking at about $200 per person per year dependent on your own consumption levels.

One thing I realised lately is that styrofoam has a very low carbon impact for its volume because its mostly air. Maybe the same applies to PU? don't know the answer but it may not be as bad as it appears.

The individual pollutants is its own issues.

Sheepdog wrote:

And you haven't addressed the making of the board.... The transport of the board to the boat, the pilot boats, oil and lubricants used in ship, some of which are incredibly processed, then transport to shop.

never intended to address any of that...in fact I never made a single statement about "buying from china" being more environmentally friendly than buying from your local shaper. I don't believe it is. my original post started by identifying that a board traveling on a ship from china to Australia appear to use about 0.6L worth of diesel. and that was it.

btw...im on your side.....buying from china is (not) ok. you automatically assumed otherwise.

mk1 wrote:

I just saw the avg aussie emits 16.5 tonne carbon per year.

At a price of $12p/tonne for offsets (is that right?) we are looking at about $200 per person per year dependent on your own consumption levels.

wasn't it $23 as proposed by labour......anyhow a few hundred isn't all that much when you think about it, particular when you consider labor was going to subsidise low income earners. and not to mention decades worth of income tax cuts. I can only hope that whilst turnbull wouldn't commit us at paris last year that hes seeing the sense of ditching the direct action scheme as even liberal recognize it cant meet the required targets. see article below from last year. love the term "indirect action"....I had to have a laugh.

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/12/19/malcolm-tur...

Yeah I don't know about the price but $12 rings a bell for current market price without a tax system???

just over $13 dollars a tonne.

https://theconversation.com/australias-climate-targets-still-out-of-reac...

and liberals know it wont work too. i predict turnbull will change tactics as soon as the 2017 revisit deadline comes along.

Spat Coffee On Computer Laughing, so hard about all those figures, commas, decimal points, zero zero's, commas and full stops.

Obviously no surfing;)

A360 what's your assumption here mate?

yes it is a little funny...but it goes toward what indo identified, that the carbon footprint due to shipping a surfboard is very small compared to the manufacturer of the board, less than 1% seems about right. in another sense, when you've put in multiple trips in your hilux talking to your local shaper then you've already emitted similar co2 as that ship.....things are not always what they seem. read an interesting article a while ago about many foods shipped long distances from other countries having smaller carbon footprint than locally grown unseasonal foods.

happyasS wrote:

yes it is a little funny...but it goes toward what indo identified, that the carbon footprint due to shipping a surfboard is very small compared to the manufacturer of the board, less than 1% seems about right. in another sense, when you've put in multiple trips in your hilux talking to your local shaper then you've already emitted similar co2 as that ship.....things are not always what they seem. read an interesting article a while ago about many foods shipped long distances from other countries having smaller carbon footprint than locally grown unseasonal foods.

It's actually quite interesting, aye Happy.....
And the food on that 15 day journey? Transporting and getting onboard.... How many crew on the boat? You're only looking at the fuel, I'd take it the whole boat is air con... What's it called... "R2" gas? Something like that....I'd assume the loo's would be pumped after every trip.... Garbage would have to be taken off.. It may all seem peripheral, but all these carbon costs would have to be added onto the fuel.. This stuff would be done every voyage... Maybe not the air con gas..... But I'm sure some heavier engine oil will be burnt..
Ever been down the bilge of a large ship, Happy? I've only been in the engine room and bilge of fishing boats, the biggest being 84 foot..... Freekn noisy cramped smelly hot horrid place lol

Yeah I know it's a bit out of date but watched that last Dave rastovich video gathering I think thought his spiel at the start about espousing the system and looking after the environment etc etc was not a bit but a lot hypocritical when his living is made from a company that uses the third world clothing businesses. Rides surfboards that again aren't very friendly for the environment. And then jumps on a plane for his pleasures, yeah great to be able to live like, but must have trouble sleeping of a night with a carbon footprint like that!!!

crew? the answer is about 12. geez, these fuckers must be eating a lot if you think their meals have a carbon footprint on your piddly 5kg's worth of cargo !

jokes aside, I recall a couple of websites saying a 6 foot board manufactured uses up to 300kg of co2.

still reckon 1% is about on the money.

I think driving and flying for waves is probably the killer here. I have offset the carbon on a few flights when its an option: NZ costs where about $3 one way from memory.

something on surfer carbon footprint.....mainly deals with board production an surfer driving miles

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.605.1046&rep=re...

how many km's does an average surfer drive in a year? and how does that compare to how many tonnes of co2 an average non-surfing aussie emits in a year just living.

not sure I want to know the result....might not make me feel so good.

What's the carbon imprint on making an oil based product compared to burning it for fuel? Ie a board vs burning petrol. Is it only the fuel used in manufacturing and distribution or dies it include what's used in the product too?