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Interesting piece. I always thought that surfers were super bad when it came to sustainability. Boards snap super easily and wetsuits last a season or two max before being dumped. But this isn’t just surfing. If you look at everything, nothing is built to last. Sadly.

I’m trying to use stuff longer and buy less. My current wetsuit is flushing and has holes. I’ve patched it a few times but I wanna wear it as long as possible to avoid waste, and ultimately save me some cash.

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Thanks Steven! Not to mention the surf trips with airplane emissions. It is very hard to actually account for our individual contributions here in North America since we don't often see the production or disposal of anything we use beyond the cardboard box things come in and the trash truck that whisks it away.

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Great piece. I’ve got a wetsuit that’s now almost a decade old. It’s been repaired several times (at no cost to me, by Patagonia) and it’s changed my opinion on how long things can last with care and repair. I think we’re on the cusp of a sustainability revolution in surfing (Stab’s latest EAST is all flax boards) and there’s a new film doing the rounds of the film festivals called The Big Sea about neoprene and cancer alley. But, like you said, what really is sustainability?

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Thank you Liam. A bit of care goes a long way. And something that I didn't address above is, should sustainability even be the goal? Should we not be striving for better? Should we really be aiming to dig up the same number of tons of material and emit the same tonnage as last year, as the word "sustain" directly implies, or should we attempt to do better?

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Hi! 🤗 I don't know if you might be interested but I love to write about fashion, travel and our relationship with clothes. My writing has not commercial purposes, in fact I focus on sustainability. I talk about anything related primarily to vintage and pre loved fashion 🎀 but also slow living and slow traveling 🌱 I like to explore the impact textile industry and consumistic culture have on the environment and also what people can do to shift the tendency.

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https://from2tothrift.substack.com/

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