Jairo Lumertz is a Brazilian surfer who built his first surfboard out of plastic bottles in Hawaii in 2007. Many professional surfers have used and approved of his bottle surfboards; indeed every year they host a surf competition on the plastic bottle boards in Garopava, South Brazil.
Projeto Prancha Ecológica
As SUP grew in popularity, Jairo and his partner, Carolina Scorsin started building SUP boards and since 2011 they have built over a hundred boards. Through the ‘Eco Board Project’, they give lectures in schools in Brazil and organize events involving teachers and students in developing SUP and surf boards made out of plastic bottles; teaching the importance of sport and preserving the environment. Watch their story here.
Having watched a video on how to build a plastic bottle board, Carlos and I were inspired to build our own. It took us a week and was very hard work, but we did it! We built our first board in March in Brazil and took it for a test ride in Caraguatatuba, São Paulo. The attention is received and conversations that it stimulated were the inspiration for our marathon expedition.