Miguel Blanco Tests Whether Virtue Can Actually Rip

For all its talk of freedom, purity, and communion with nature, surfing has always been a rather toxic pursuit.

Your average surfboard, white and light as sin, is essentially a piece of petrochemical waste destined to die in a landfill, never biodegrading, just welcoming more of its kind. About as eco-friendly as a cigarette butt.

In the latest chapter of Miguel Blanco’s Impact series, the Portuguese surfer turns to his new eco-quiver and poses the question: Could you even survive the waves I already have?

They didn’t answer, because inanimate objects don’t talk back when spoken to. So he responded to their mute apathy by tossing them into a wheeled boardbag and heading on a test run that began at home, with detours to Nazaré, Jaws, the North Shore, and an infamous sand (and bone) compressor in Morocco.

The boards were shaped locally at Polen Surfboards using recycled PU blanks by Polyola, and glassed with bio-based epoxy resin. Miguel’s step is humble, but it’s nonetheless in the right direction: toward riding something that feels less like a moral compromise.

Still, there’s a reputation problem. Eco-boards have long been dismissed as well-meaning but less capable in terms of performance and structurally weaker. Almost surfing’s equivalent of a paper straw.

“We towed them, paddled them, and put them to the test on super high-performance waves,” he said. “And they worked. You can see how far we pushed the equipment, and how well it responded to the conditions.”

With empirical evidence to back the theory, and personally satisfied with the outcome, Miguel, ever inquisitive, posed a new question: Why aren’t we all riding these boards?