California Man Builds Surfboard Out of 10,000 Cigarette Butts (PHOTOS)

© Flickr / Malaya K PradhanCigarette butts
Cigarette butts - Sputnik International
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A surfer from California has won a recycled surfboard contest by making a board out of… several thousands cigarette butts plucked from the beach.

Have you ever considered what cigarette butts could be good for? In fact, these nasty remains of the tobacco industry are a plague on every place people like to congregate. Their acetate fibers decompose take 5 to 15 years to decompose, ensuring the little pieces of trash smokers leave behind stay there for a long time.

However, a surfer from California named Taylor Lane has managed to put them to a good use by making a surfboard out of them.

"This is the most polluting item picked up on the beach," creator Taylor Lane told the Orange County Register. "And no one thinks twice that you can do anything with it."

According to a report by the India Times, Lane and his friend spent their summer plucking cigarette butts from the beach, parking lots and local paths in Santa Cruz, cementing them together with styrofoam.

​The result is a fully functional 7.7 kg board named the "Roach Tail" that looks like a huge, flat ashtray.

According to the Wavelength Magazine, this is quite a heavy board, and because of that, seriously lacks in maneuverability. On the other hand, it does have an advantage.

​"I was happy to discover that while it was nearly impossible to turn, the Roach Tail had incredible speed through flat sections," said Micheal Ciaramella, a reporter of another surf magazine, Stab, who had an opportunity to test the board.

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Clearly, Roach Tail is more of a message than an actual board. It not only draws attention to the issue of heavily littered beaches in California, it is also a nod towards the board-making industry, whose favorite building material — Polyurethane — is easily-shaped but highly toxic. Environmentally-friendly polystyrene boards do exist, but it takes twice as much labor to shape them, according to SurfScience.com.

The Roach Tail won first prize at the annual "Creators & Innovators Upcycle Contest" hosted by the Vissla surfing gear brand and the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation.

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