Wave Cycle
‘Wave Cycle’ is a sustainable plastic furniture range made from recycled surf and bodyboards.
How does it work?
It is estimated that every year 16,000 cheap, polystyrene bodyboards are abandoned on UK beaches often after a single use. The design and manufacturing process is committed to supporting and celebrating environmentalism within the surfing industry. This process also provides a recycling solution to the waste within short life polystyrene packaging foam. Through taking a short life material and increasing the longevity in the form of a long-life piece of furniture that is part of a circular manufacturing system, it highlights innovation. The manufacturing process is broken down in 3 simple stages. The polystyrene foam structure broken down through heat and reduces in size by 90%. The melted plastic is then placed in the shredder which produces small granules which makes the plastic easier to process for the extrusion machine. Finally the plastic is heated again and injected directly into a the mould.
Why is it needed?
The furniture range provides a solution to the industry of single use plastic aswell as highlighting the problem to the surfing industry of poorl design and made non durable boards. This goes againt the ethics of what surfing is all about as it should bring people closer to caring about the natural environment around them.
How does it improve life?
There are no current solutions to recycling polystyrene as it is not cost effective enough to recycle or regenerate. The benefit of this is that it gains a higher value for the single use material. Polystyrene is incredible damaging to the environement if left to leak into the ocean breaking into lots of small balls representing fish eggs and easily mistakem as food for marine life. It also takes up17% of the UKS landfill space.