3D Printing Paradise: How Tech Is Saving Our Environment and Surfboards

Learn how the most powerful innovations frequently emerge not from abstract problem-solving but from personal experiences of frustration or failure.     

Supporting links

1.      Swellcycle [Website]

2.      Swellcycle [Instagram]

3.      Patricio Guerrero LinkedIn]

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Transcript

⏱️ 16 min read     

Today we're talking about something that's been bugging the surfboard culture for decades—something most of us don't want to think about when we're waxing up our surfboards at dawn.

You know that feeling when you're splashing you’re hands into the sea to catch that first wave, the water's like glass, the sun's just breaking over the horizon, and everything feels right with the world? Now imagine looking down at your board and realizing it's part of the problem. Yeah, we're going there…environment vibes.

I’ll be sharing a story with you about a guy who literally broke his board and ended up breaking the mold on how surfboards get made. We're talking innovation, we're talking about sustainability, and we're talking about whether the future of surfing can actually save the ocean instead of slowly destroying it. 

Welcome to That's Life, I Swear. This podcast is about life's happenings in this world that conjure up such words as intriguing, frightening, life-changing, inspiring, and more. I'm Rick Barron your host. 

That said, here's the rest of this story                        

The Story: When Breaking Point Becomes Breaking Through

The cave off the Santa Cruz coastline had witnessed countless wipeouts, but this particular impact carried consequences that would ripple far beyond a single damaged board. When Patricio Guerrero's leash snapped on his surfboard in 2020, his board launched into the rocky formation with enough force to obliterate its nose. He remembers the sickening crack echoing off the stone walls, that universal sound every surfer dreads—the sound of money and memories shattering all at the same time.

Back in his garage, surrounded by the afternoon light filtering through dusty garage windows, Guerrero began the familiar ritual of repair. His hands moved with practiced efficiency, mixing resin, cutting fiberglass, and smoothing edges. But something felt different this time. As the repair progressed, a mountain of plastic scraps accumulated beside Guerrero’s workbench—chunks of foam, strips of fiberglass, droplets of hardened resin. The pile grew larger than seemed possible from a single board's damaged section.

He stared at the waste, really looked at it for perhaps the first time in his surfing life. This wasn't just trash from one repair job. This represented something larger, something systemic. The thought settled over him like marine fog. And then it hit him, if this much waste came from fixing one board, how much resulted from building millions of them?

The next morning brought a small revelation that would bring everything to follow. Guerrero did his civic duty and placed all the plastic remnants in his recycling bin, feeling honorable about his environmental mindfulness. The next day as dawn broke, Guerrero discovered the bin remained exactly where he'd left it—full, untouched, in short, rejected. 

A quick phone call to the city recycling facility confirmed his growing suspicion: polyurethane foam boards weren't recyclable through standard municipal programs. The material was simply incompatible with existing recycling infrastructure.

"Wrong kind of plastic," the facility worker had explained with casual indifference, as if dismissing decades of accumulated waste with three words.

Guerrero found himself at his local surf shop that afternoon, not to buy anything, but to ask questions, a lot of questions. The owner, a weathered waterman who'd been shaping boards for forty years, confirmed what Guerrero was beginning to understand. Every board started as an oversized blank—essentially a massive rectangular block of rigid foam. Shapers carved away anywhere from thirty to fifty percent of that material to achieve the desired curves, rocker, and rail shape. And where did all that carved-away foam go? It went straight into dumpsters, destined for landfills where it would persist for centuries.

The conversations multiplied from there. Fellow surfers in the lineup, shapers, surf shop employees, environmental activists—everyone acknowledged the problem, but most responded with resigned shrugs. This was how surfboards had always been made dude. 

The industry had refined the process over decades, perfecting the foam-and-fiberglass construction that delivered performance characteristics surfers demanded. Changing the fundamental material or manufacturing process seemed impractical, expensive, and potentially disastrous for board performance.

But Guerrero's mind had already shifted into problem-solving mode, the same mental space he'd occupied years earlier when converting his 1972 Volkswagen Beetle into an electric vehicle during high school, as one would do. That project had drawn doubt. Friends and teachers question why anyone would gut a classic car to install batteries and motors. Yet he'd succeeded in creating a functioning electric vehicle decades before Tesla made them cool.

His academic rise had prepared him precisely for this moment, though he hadn't recognized it at the time. A bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from UC Irvine, California, provided the technical foundation. At the same time, his master's in design and manufacturing, also from UC Irvine, California, taught him how to think about production systems, material properties, and scalable processes. Suddenly, those seemingly abstract academic concepts had found their most personal application yet.

The research phase consumed Guerrero’s evenings and weekends. He studied polymer chemistry, examined biodegradable materials, and investigated 3D printing technologies that were rapidly evolving beyond simple plastic trinkets. One material kept appearing in his research: polylactic acid, commonly called PLA. Derived from fermented plant starches—primarily corn and sugarcane—PLA offered genuine biodegradability while maintaining structural integrity comparable to that of traditional plastics.

What was most interesting was that PLA could be 3D-printed with a precision impossible with traditional carving methods. Instead of starting with excess material and subtracting until the desired shape remained, 3D printing would add material layer by microscopic layer, using only precisely what the final product required. The concept felt revolutionary in its elegant simplicity.

Eleven months after his board shattered in that Santa Cruz cave, Guerrero stood in his garage examining his prototype. The 3D printer—a commercial model he'd extensively modified—had labored for nearly 24 hours to complete the board. The surface showed the characteristic layer lines of additive manufacturing, and the internal structure visible through translucent sections revealed an intricate lattice pattern that provided strength while minimizing weight.

He started a company and named it Swellcycle, a nod to both the ocean swells that powered every ride and the circular-economy model he envisioned—boards that could return to their component materials at end-of-life, cycling indefinitely rather than accumulating in landfills.

That prototype performed surprisingly well during initial tests, though it required several iterations before matching the flex, buoyancy, and responsiveness of traditional boards. Each version taught new lessons about internal geometry, wall thickness, framework density, and surface finishing. Guerrero recruited Lili Van Hassel, whose background in sustainable operations brought crucial expertise about recycling logistics, supply chain management, and environmental certification.

Together, they confronted a fundamental challenge: commercial 3D printers couldn't accommodate full-size surfboards. The solution required building their own machines from scratch—very tall rectangular frames housing custom print heads capable of traversing the length of longboards while maintaining micrometer-level precision. The printers stood taller than their operators, resembling futuristic looms weaving plastic thread into rideable sculptures.

The manufacturing process Swellcycle developed represented a complete reimagining of surfboard production. Designs began in CAD software, where every curve could be precisely specified and adjusted. The digital files went directly to the printers, which methodically constructed each board layer by layer, building from the deck upward. The internal framework structure—impossible to achieve through traditional construction—reinforced stress lines while keeping overall weight competitive with foam alternatives.

Let it be said, no detail was left out.

Only the temporary support structures that held overhanging sections during printing generated waste, and even those supports were recycled immediately into usable material. The contrast with traditional methods was staggering where conventional production might discard 40% of starting materials, Swellcycle's process generated less than 5% waste, all of it recyclable.

Van Hassel proved instrumental in developing the end-of-life recycling program. When Swellcycle boards finally wore out—a process that took longer than traditional boards due to PLA's superior durability—customers could return them to be ground into pellets and reprocessed into new products. The concept of circular manufacturing, long discussed in environmental circles, had found tangible expression in surfboard form.

One significant challenge remained unsolved: the epoxy resin coating that provided water resistance and durability couldn't be easily recycled with current technology. When heated, resin combusted rather than melting, making it incompatible with standard recycling processes. The team experimented with repurposing cured resin waste into fins and other solid components, though a truly circular solution for resin remained elusive.

The October 2025 demonstration day in Santa Cruz, California, provided crucial validation. Local surfers—many deeply dubious of any deviation from traditional board construction—tested the 3D-printed boards in real conditions. Jason Glickman, whose three decades of experience gave his opinions significant weight, reported that the board felt stiff and fast with excellent drive through turns. Others noted the distinctive feel, different from foam but not inferior, simply different.

Ricardo Urbinas articulated what many in the lineup were thinking: surfers bore responsibility for the environmental impact of their equipment choices. The community that claimed to love the ocean most deeply couldn't continue ignoring how its boards contributed to its degradation.

Tom Wilson, founder of the Australian organization Wavechanger, had been researching surfing's environmental footprint for years. His findings painted a sobering picture: manufacturing a single six-foot surfboard generated carbon emissions equivalent to those of a person flying over 1,000 miles. Alternative foam materials that reduced fossil fuel dependence came with their own problems—they fragmented into tiny beads that marine animals ingested, with fatal consequences.

Wilson had documented seabirds found dead with stomachs packed full of foam beads, their digestive systems fatally blocked by material from broken surfboards. The images were haunting: creatures that embodied oceanic freedom, killed by the very equipment meant to celebrate it.

This was the surfer's paradox Swellcycle aimed to resolve: the community most passionate about ocean conservation was inadvertently contributing to ocean destruction through the equipment their sport required. Every board purchase represented a choice, and for too long, the only available option was environmentally destructive.

The recognition from UC Santa Cruz's Seymour Marine Discovery Center, which named Swellcycle boards the "Earth & Sea Invention of the Year," provided important institutional validation. Academic and scientific communities were taking notice, seeing potential applications beyond surfing. If the technology could work for surfboards, what other products might benefit from similar rethinking?

Guerrero envisions Swellcycle as more than a surfboard company. He sees it as proof-of-concept for sustainable sports equipment manufacturing broadly. Skis, snowboards, kayaks, paddleboards—all these products currently follow similar wasteful production models. All could potentially benefit from the additive manufacturing approach Swellcycle pioneered.

The journey from that broken board in a Santa Cruz cave to an internationally recognized innovation took five years of relentless problem-solving. Guerrero transformed a moment of frustration into a company that's actively reshaping its industry's relationship with the environment. The blue recycling bin that rejected his plastic waste had inadvertently generated a revolution.

On any given morning, Guerrero can be found in Swellcycle's workshop, surrounded by towering 3D printers humming as they construct tomorrow's boards. Through the windows, the Santa Cruz coastline stretches toward the horizon, waves rolling in with timeless rhythm. Those same waves that powered his fateful session five years ago continue their endless work, now carrying surfers on boards that honor rather than harm the ocean that makes their sport possible. 

What can we learn from this story? What's the takeaway?The most powerful innovations frequently emerge not from abstract problem-solving but from personal experiences of frustration or failure. 

Guerrero's journey began with a broken board and a rejected recycling bin—mundane moments that sparked extraordinary change. This reminds us to pay attention to the friction points in our own lives and industries. The problems that annoy us personally might represent opportunities for systemic solutions.

Well, there you go, my friends; that's life, I swear

For further information regarding the material covered in this episode, I invite you to visit my website, which can be found on Apple Podcasts, for show notes and the episode transcript.

As always, I thank you for the privilege of you listening and your interest. 

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