Waste Wipeout (with video)

Got expanded polystyrene foam (better, though inaccurately, known as Styrofoam)? Sure, you could recycle it (assuming you’re lucky enough to have a recycler that accepts it) into something boring, like more packaging material. But why, when you could use it to make something as rad as a surfboard?

Waste to Waves is a campaign launched by the California-based non-profit Sustainable Surf, which seeks to make the surf community more sustainable. The program collects EPS at bins stationed at surf shops. That material is collected and remanufactured by partner company Marko Foam into surfboard blanks (the rough core of a surfboard that is subsequently carved by surfboard shapers into a finished board). Sustainable Surf says boards made using the recycled EPS are as easy to shape and perform just as well as boards hewn from “virgin” EPS, but with half the carbon footprint.

Plus they probably look a lot cooler than trying to catch a wave standing atop the unmodified foam brick your stereo came packed in.

Source: wastetowaves.org via espn.go.com