The team at Signal Snowboards is always getting up to some crazy stuff on its Every Third Thursday show. Previously, we featured the crew's all glass snowboard, and now they are showing off another left-field approach: a snowboard made from 100 percent recycled cardboard.
The California-based snowboard company made a total of three boards to test on the mountain. The first one was built along with Ernest Paper Products using a basic polyurethane that can be acquired from most hardware stores to seal the board and give it a little extra strength. The others were made with the same cardboard materials, but were put together at Signal's factory using the same resin used for traditional snowboards.
Essentially, the team layered cardboard on cardboard with different support pieces to help the snowboard handle the flex and weight of a rider traveling down a hill. As you might expect, simply cutting cardboard into the shape of a snowboard wouldn't get them very far, so they definitely had to get a little creative to give it some extra strength.
In the end, they were able to complete a few runs on the disposable snowboards. The board with the polyurethane seal did last a little longer, but still not even close to a full day of riding. However, the team claims that the boards only cost $14 in materials (not including bindings). Will we ever see these for sale? It's unlikely, but if it did, it would actually be cheaper to use one of these than most mountains charge to rent a board.
Check out the Signal Snowboards video below to see the cardboard shredder in action.
Source: Signal Boards