ReSurf for Earth Day at Long Beach Lodge’s Surf Club
Earth Day and every day, Long Beach Lodge Resort is committed to making our business model more sustainable.
Earth Day falls on April 22nd this year and we at Long Beach Lodge Resort always use the day as an opportunity to check in with our ongoing sustainability efforts. The health of our planet, and by extension the pristine beach on which our lodge is located, is a huge part of who we are as a company. Nobody wants to visit a dirty beach!
Over the years, Long Beach Lodge has partnered with our local Surfrider Chapter on a number of initiatives, including the Hold On To Your Butt campaign, which seeks to pick up stinky cigarette butts and make sure they’re properly disposed of. And because we’ve met certain criteria in regards to waste management, plastic elimination and more, Surfrider has designated Long Beach Lodge Resort as an Ocean Friendly Business.
But this year, we’ve partnered with Surfrider to do something new. As a world-class surf school equipped with a full fleet of rental gear, our Surf Club has A LOT of wetsuits and surfboards. And no piece of gear lasts forever, so Surfrider’s ReSurf Program will help repurpose our older equipment. “We work to divert the growing volume of surfboard and wetsuit material from the landfill through repair, remanufacturing and recycling,” says Surfrider.
“With the products that are lightly damaged, [ReSurf] will do repairs and sell them back to the community getting more life out of them,” adds the head of Surf Club, Chance McCullough.
And with suits that are too far gone to be repaired, the materials will be ground down in the ReSurf Program’s new facility and repurposed into a variety of different items such as change mats, yoga mats and more.
In years past, Surf Club has sent our soft top surfboards to Aftanas, the local surfboard shaper and they’ve replaced the EVA foam, gotten the gear back into our fleet and helped us save countless boards from the landfill. Surfrider’s ReSurf program is currently set up to process old EPS foam. “We will be using innovative technologies to not only manage these waste streams at end-of-life, but additionally find solutions to repurpose these processed materials through a circular economic approach within the surfing industry moving forward,” says Surfrider.
Thanks to a grant from the BC government, the ReSurf program has a brand new brick-and-mortar facility just down the road in Ucluelet. And that’s big news because up until now, Canada has had no end-of-life solutions for the waste associated with surfing. The community is coming together to celebrate the opening of the new spot with a launch party on May 8th. There will be a raffle, to which the lodge has donated a two-night stay in one of our Deluxe Beachfront Rooms and also two Surf Club memberships.
Surfing is such a part of life out here in Tofino. And it just wouldn’t be possible without a healthy ecosystem. As a local business, we’re committed to working with like-minded partners to help take care of the place that gives us so much.
Happy Earth Day everyone!
