Exposing Greenwashing In The Wetsuit Industry

REVOLUTIONISING THE WETSUIT INDUSTRY

ISURUS exists to deliver the most warm and comfortable wetsuits for surfing. Our commitment to this mission often brings us into conflict with bigger corporate companies. Fundamentally, they want to sell you a new wetsuit every year. The tactics they employ to achieve that objective can mean stretching the truth and creating new gimmicks for the sake of it. We prefer to iterate our product development based on direct feedback from customers and our team.

We also want to call out the BS that makes it harder for a small business like ours to get noticed.

We recorded some videos highlighting our perspective which you can watch below.

You can help by sharing this article with your surf crew and having a conversation about the reality of environment sustainability in the wetsuit industry.

PART 1: GREENWASHING WETSUITS

Unfortunately the wetsuit industry is not immune to the use of greenwashing to sell more products. What's a little different is the sheer number of gimmicks and "innovations" that companies seem willing to market to surfers. There's no oversight, no proof, and frankly, no shame, in some of the environmental claims that corporate wetsuit companies are prepared to make.

PART 2: NATURAL RUBBER VS UV SUNLIGHT

A common misconception about the environmental impact of wetsuits relates to the use of Natural Rubber by some companies. Despite some benefits in the level of CO2 emissions, it does not respond well to UV sunlight and rapidly degrades. This is why there is always 15-20% of other materials included in "natural rubber" wetsuits.

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PART 3: WETSUIT RECYCLING

Despite many efforts to provide second life uses for wetsuits, it's really complicated. The main fabric of a wetsuit is a number of different fabrics laminated together which are very costly to separate. There are zips, seams, glues and stitching which also need to be considered.

PART 4: KEEPING WETSUITS OUT OF LANDFILL

We believe that the most environmentally friendly wetsuit is the one that stays out of landfill the longest. If you're wetsuit lasts 3-4 seasons then that's far better for the environment than one that lasts a season. We validated this approach in a (very basic) Life Cycle Analysis.

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PART 5: COUNTERFEIT YAMAMOTO LIMESTONE NEOPRENE

We have tested every available material to understand if there's anything out there which compares to Limestone Neoprene manufactured by Yamamoto. We cannot find anything comparable.

This exceptional material has recently become a victim of its own success, with some wetsuit manufactures claiming to use Yamamoto fabrics because of the growing recognition of its quality, when they are actually using a sub-standard material.

KEEP LEARNING AND SHARING THE KNOWLEDGE

We're committed to building exceptional wetsuits that help you maximise your surfing performance. This commitment includes manufacturing very durable wetsuits, and that intersects with our philosophy that the most environmentally sustainable wetsuits are the ones that stay out of landfill the longest.

All of this hard work is for nothing if we can't rise above the marketing budgets and BS greenwashing of companies with institutional funding.

So we're here to share the knowledge we've relied on and gained on our quest to create the ultimate surfing wetsuit.

You can read more about the lengths we've gone to in order to understand the real environmental impact of wetsuits:

A very basic Life Cycle Analysis- we look at the environmental costs of different wetsuit materials and discover it's not nearly as bad as you might think