Annecy, France – A group of designers, product developers and R&D experts at sports equipment manufacturer Salomon have put scrap plastic, including polyurethane offcuts, to good use. A 3kg pair of skis, they said, also creates 3kg of production waste. Could this be used to make new products?
They picked PU, ABS, PP and PA materials out of the waste, shredded them into flakes, and used a heat press machine to experiment on to transform the flakes into new materials. The visual appearance of every sample was different, with random designs depending on the colour and nature of the waste used to make it.
The sidewalls of the new Salomon Addikt skis are already being made using the recycled material. Various other prototypes have also been created, including snowboards and snowboard bindings.
“In the future, the value of a product might be seen through the lens of what it was in its previous life,” said Sylvain Merlin, a designer in the company’s snowboard team. “Indeed, the Trash is Gold project is the story of materials that never die and proof that, in the hands of the right people, what was once considered ugly waste can live a beautiful second life.”
