Industry News
Re-Up Tech is a first-of-its-kind program that recycles retired snowboards and upcycles the materials into new snowboards
Winter apparel and backcountry gear brand Jones Snowboards is thrilled to announce a groundbreaking new snowboard production technology called Re-Up Tech that allows snowboards to be recycled and the collected materials to be used to make new snowboards. The Re-Up Tech process was designed in partnership with SWS Board Technology, Jones’ snowboard factory partner.
Jones Snowboards completed a life cycle assessment (LCA) of their snowboards in 2020. The LCA showed that incinerating or throwing a retired or broken snowboard in the landfill had a notable impact on a snowboard’s overall carbon footprint. Re-Up Tech was conceived as a means to reduce a snowboard’s end-of-life impact and bring manufacturing circularity to the ski and snowboard industry for the first time.
“We’re always looking for innovative ways to reduce the impact of our business. Re-Up Tech is undoubtedly the most meaningful sustainability accomplishment we’ve ever made. Every board we keep out of the landfill is a win for the planet, and the challenge of recycling skis or snowboards has been a long-standing riddle of our industry that we’re honored to have finally solved.”
– Jeremy Jones, founder of Jones Snowboards
The Re-Up Tech process begins by collecting old snowboards that are no longer rideable. The collected boards are then shipped to the SWS snowboard factory. The universal nature of the technology allows snowboards of any brand, model, or year to be recycled and 95% of the materials to be reused.
Once the boards arrive at the factory, the first step is to remove the steel edges and inserts from each board. These steel components are then recycled with other scrap metal. The top sheet and base of each board are then sanded to remove any residue, and then the boards get pressed flat in a hydraulic press. Six clean, flattened boards are then stacked and glued together to create a block of snowboard materials that includes alternating layers of p-tex bases, wood cores, stringers, and top sheets. The block is then cut into thin slices that include all the layers from the six boards. This thin slice of snowboard materials is then inserted in the wood cores of new snowboards as a stringer.
“Traditionally, carbon fiber or another composite fiber stringer is layered on top of a snowboard’s wood core to help suck up chatter and add pop. In both on-snow and lab tests, Re-Up Tech stringers have proven to absorb vibrations and be more torsionally stable than any stringer material Jones has ever tested. There are no performance sacrifices in using these upcycled materials. Re-Up Tech stringers are unbelievably strong and damp because of the perpendicular orientation of the material layers relative to the wood core.”
– Jones Brand Manager Xavier Nidecker
The newly redesigned Hovercraft 2.0 Snowboard is the only Jones model in the 23/24 product collection that will feature Re-Up Tech stringers in its construction. Jones Snowboards plans to introduce the technology into more models in future seasons once they have established a stable supply of boards to recycle.
To address the challenge of acquiring more boards to recycle, Jones will launch a snowboard collection program this season with options for customers to either send their retired boards back to the Jones Snowboards HQ in Truckee, CA, via a complimentary return shipping label or drop them off at select Jones dealers in the USA and EU. Customers will receive a $50 / €50 credit toward the purchase of a new Jones board for each board they recycle directly through Jonessnowboards.com. Jones will also recycle any boards that get returned for warranty and rejected factory “thirds” that were never sold.
For now, Re-Up Tech is a Jones Snowboards-exclusive technology with the intention of allowing other brands to use the technology in the future. Over one million snowboards have been produced globally every year since 1995, and with few exceptions, most of these boards eventually end up dumped in the trash when they are no longer rideable. The brand’s goal is to keep every dead snowboard out of the landfill with the support of every rider and snowboard brand.
Jones Snowboards strives to make products that balance performance, sustainability, and innovation. Re-Up Tech is a perfect reflection of their design ethos, and the brand looks forward to inspiring the entire industry to re-think how skis and snowboards are discarded with their development of Re-Up Tech.
For more information about Re-Up Tech, visit www.jonessnowboards.com/content/579-re-up.
