New ordinance taxes boards by wax and resin carbon footprint tier

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – The Santa Monica City Council voted 5-2 Tuesday night to approve a first-in-the-nation “Surfboard Emissions Assessment,” a fee structure that will require surfers to register their boards annually and pay a sliding tax based on the estimated carbon footprint of the wax, resin, and foam used in construction.

Officials Say the Data Demanded Action

The measure grew out of a city-commissioned sustainability study that concluded surfboard wax, much of it petroleum-based, represents “a measurable and previously unregulated coastal emissions category.” The study did not specify how it measured emissions from a bar of wax roughly the size of a deck of cards, though the council’s environmental liaison, Priya Nandakumar, said the methodology “underwent rigorous internal peer review by two people on staff who also surf.”

“We’re not trying to ban surfing,” Nandakumar told reporters outside City Hall. “We’re trying to price in the true environmental cost of a lifestyle that presents itself as eco-friendly while, frankly, leaving a lot of wax shavings in the sand.”

Under the new system, boards will be classified into three tiers – Standard, Performance, and Longboard – each carrying a different annual registration fee, with an additional surcharge for what the ordinance calls “non-biodegradable wax usage,” verified through a self-reported checkbox on the registration form.

Local Surfers Question the Enforcement Mechanism

Surf shop owner Trevor Aldana, who has sold boards in the area for two decades, said he was baffled by how the city plans to verify compliance. “Are they going to smell my wax? Is there a wax inspector now? Because I would like to meet this person and understand their qualifications.”

The city has confirmed that enforcement will initially rely on an honor system, backed by spot checks conducted by parking enforcement officers who have been given a half-day training session on “wax identification basics.” A sample slide from the training materials, obtained by this outlet, shows three types of wax with the caption “when in doubt, assume the worst.”

Council member Diane Okafor, one of the two dissenting votes, said she supported the environmental goal but worried about the optics of taxing a beach community’s most visible recreational activity while larger emissions sources went unaddressed. “We’re going after guys with wax on their boards while the marina still runs diesel generators on weekends. I just think we should be honest about where the easy targets are.”

Wax Manufacturers Respond

A spokesperson for one of the state’s largest surf wax manufacturers said the company was “reviewing the ordinance with interest” and noted that it already sells a biodegradable line that would fall into the ordinance’s lowest tax bracket. The spokesperson added that sales of the biodegradable line had “increased noticeably” in the 48 hours since the ordinance passed, which the company described as “a market responding exactly as markets should.”

Some surfers have proposed workarounds, including switching entirely to biodegradable wax or, in the case of one longtime local known only as Gordo, refusing to register his board at all. “They can come get it,” Gordo said, patting a board that appeared to be held together primarily by duct tape and optimism. “This board’s older than the ordinance. I don’t think it counts.”

Broader Coastal Cities Are Reportedly Watching

Nandakumar said several nearby coastal cities have reached out for information on replicating the program, though none have committed publicly. She characterized the interest as “very encouraging,” while acknowledging that the city has not yet calculated how much revenue the tax is expected to generate, nor how that revenue will be spent, beyond a vague reference to “coastal resilience programming,” a phrase that has appeared in several unrelated municipal initiatives this year.

Prat.uk‘s own environment desk has covered comparable emissions-accounting exercises applied to recreational gear in the UK, noting a similar pattern in which enforcement infrastructure lags well behind the ambition of the policy itself.

Registration Process Already Generating Confusion

In the days since the vote, the city’s newly launched online registration portal has reportedly struggled to handle basic questions from residents, including how to classify a board that has been repaired multiple times with different types of resin, whether a rental board used only occasionally counts toward an individual’s personal registration total, and what happens if a surfer owns a board purchased secondhand with no documentation of its original construction materials. City staff have said they are “working through edge cases as they arise,” a phrase that has already appeared in three separate public statements this week.

Aldana said several customers have simply started asking him to guess their board’s emissions tier rather than navigate the portal themselves. “I’ve become an unofficial wax appraiser now. People walk in, hand me their board, and go ‘what tier am I.’ I didn’t sign up for this job when I opened a surf shop, but here we are.”

The ordinance takes effect at the start of the next fiscal year, giving surfers roughly four months to register their boards, calculate their wax tier, and, in Gordo’s case, decide whether a board can legally be considered “unregistered” if it technically still floats.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com

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