The problem: how to get boards made in Thailand to major surf markets without drowning customers in foam, plastic and tape.
Whatever you want to sling at Kelly Slater, you can’t say the old man don’t…try.
The sustainability activist has built wave pools, created deck grip and fin brands, a couple of clothing lines, sandals inspired by moon and turtles, buys and sells real estate like you and I trade five-year-old five-tens and, right now, is having a good shot at packing his Firewire surfboards in anything but plastic.
Kelly Slater, as you know, is a majority-owner of Firewire, having bought a seventy-percent share in the company almost one decade ago.
In a post earlier today, Kelly Slater cemented his eco bona fides, as if any further cement needed to be applied, when he demonstrated an all-cardboard method of packing surfboards being sent to Firewire’s customers, and retailers.
Now, this is real important for Firewire ’cause all the boards are made in a 98,000 square foot factory in Thailand, as are sister brands Slater Designs and Tomo, and you gotta get ’em to the major markets in the US, Europe and Australia. Which means securing ’em in enough armour to survive ship, plane and truck.
In the demo, Slater pulls out his boards from an all-cardboard case. It’s free of plastics, foam and adhesive tapes, all due, he says, to the magic of cohesive cardboard where the paper is covered with a natural latex that only sticks to itself and not the surfboard.
Real clever and something Slater says he’s been working on for one year.
“Cohesive cardboard sticks to itself and it’s easy to rip along its corrugated lines, he says. “When you stick it down you don’t need any tape on the inside.”
Better than a boxful of foam, various plastics and yards of tape, no?
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genius
This makes as much sense as Jack Johnson’s electric tractor.
Wow ..you circle jerker lewis gizzard wanna bees at the grit .have groomed a nice collection of the brain dead sheep in the comment section….and Kelly moves forward .
Does R. Kelly stealing a young pro surfers young girlfriend and then many years later making her pregnant after not marrying her and becomes a father for the first time even though he had a daughter almost 30 years ago count as recycling?
Who even says plastic is bad, scientists??? Hope Kelly is doing his own research.
The board itself is a stick of petroleum. It’s like Kelly is peeling the chocolate shell off a Häagen-Dazs bar and calling it a diet food.
Don’t buy a Firewire, problem solved.
Kelly: “The cohesive cardboard allows for an infinite number of domicile designs and sizes and can be readily broken down when local code enforcement begins ticketing”
Disposable hero of hypocrisy
Album and Pyzel also do something similar?
Fixin’ they didn’t teach the definition of irony at Coco Beach junior high…
It’s been a decade since working in a core shop but even then surfboards from company’s like Channel Island and their peers would arrive in 90% cardboard packaging.
True. But only on the East Coast or in areas far from the board shapers. Majority of boards are hand-delivered by the staff/rep in all countries. Never see cardboard.
Plus they are 5 in a box if have to freight to shops.
Asian boards are each individually wrapped in their own box.
Been extremely fortunate to never have the experience of owning a pop-out shape or etc.
Cohesive Control ?
No surprise there
Okay, just so you know I’m trying to follow along.
Plastics are a synthetic material that can be recycled and used for a variety of other purposes, created with petroleum by-products.
Cardboard is a semi synthetic material that utilizes petroleum based glues, and can be recycled, that are created by chopping down tress (which absorb CO2) and turned into cardboard in a factory that uses petroleum or coal fuel to generate energy for its machinery.
Then, Kalley’s surfboards, made of petroleum by-products in one of the most polluted countries on the planet are shipped throughout the world by planes, trains, ships, trucks and automobiles….which use petroleum.
Thank you Kelly.
When it rains on my empty cardboard boxes and they dissolve, is that really just oil running off into the yard??
That’s oil you need to know…
What about coated corrugated cardboard core instead of foam?
What about corrugated cardboard cut-outs instead of a WSL commentary team?
What about corrugated cardboard instead of the WSL?
You’re definitely on to something
* * * * *
If Kelly doesn’t
Reincarnate as tofu
I’ll be very sad
green washed tofu?
this guys carbon footprint is bigger than Texas. How about he sails to the next pin
A man of contradictions, yes! But even little victories are worth something.
true, in these times its all we’ve got
define green washing?