Your surfboard is alive.  It sang to you the first time you saw it.  It dances under your feet.  You probably have a name for it.  Now, maybe it’s yellow, has pressure dings, the wax is dirty, and it’s sitting in your shed or garage with a bunch of other “dead” boards.  Well there is life for your surfboard beyond the garage.  Your used board could become asphalt or roof tiles, a lifelong passion for a kid in Central America, or money in your pocket. But what your board shouldn’t become is landfill waste.  There are more options than ever for getting rid of used, vintage, or broken surfboards.  And as the surfboard industry begins to make the transition to more sustainable materials, make sure your PU or EPS foam board fully lives out the rest of its life.

Sell your board: It’s easier than it’s ever been to sell things online, especially locally.  The days of parking your board in a surf shop to sell on consignment, or sitting around all day at a garage sale are coming to an end.  Now you can snap some digital photos of your board, write up a description, and sell it at the price of your choosing – without even leaving your house.

Craigslist is a great, well-known resource for selling used boards and other gear.  You can sell your item locally or even post it in neighboring cities.  However, if you want to buy or sell a board on a more surf-specific website, there are some new options you can try.   A fairly new site, Broslist can be thought of as the extreme-sports version of Craigslist.  You can buy and sell boards and other gear, offer services such as surf lessons, and even find your surfing soulmate in the personals section.  At Boardhunt you can buy and sell boards of all types as well as accessories.  According to the Boardhunt website, boosting the “‘board flow’ from one rider to the next in line, we’ll continue to improve it with innovative ideas that benefit everyone”.   Check out their blog for tips on shipping and selling your boards.  Rerip, whose motto is reduce, reuse, rerip, currently focuses on the greater San Diego area.  It’s a great site to buy and sell boards, accessories, and even other gear such as photography equipment and art.   And if your board is old enough to be considered vintage,the US Vintage Surf Auction is a great place to get your money’s worth.  The USVSA is the first and only world-wide all online vintage surfboard auction and they don’t only auction boards, but  also vintage collectibles and memorabilia.

Pass on the stoke: Maybe you can’t sell your board, maybe you don’t need to.  Perhaps you just need to free up some room and clear you clutter.  Then donate your surfboard to a kid who might not otherwise get the privelage of ever owning one.  Rerip and Boardhunt both donate used boards to the less fortunate.

Reincarnate your surfboard: Let your surfboard live out the rest of its life as a skate park, sidewalk, or art piece.  Rerip has multiple drop-off locations where you can drop off your used or broken board.  They then make the boards available for artists and construction companies to reuse the materials.   Resurf has both drop-off locations and a pick-up service.  In addition to using donated surfboards, Resurf also collects manufacturing waste from surf shops and surfboard factories and pulverizes the material to create concrete and asphalt mixes for roads and several other products such as lightweight- fireproof roof-tiles.

Regardless of what you choose to do with that used or broken board, make sure it doesn’t end up in the trash.  Recycle, reduce, reuse and close the loop.