Making boards from boards
Jones Re-Up Tech
Introducing a new technology that recycles dead snowboards and upcycles the materials.
How do you make a new snowboard from a dead, broken or defective snowboard? It’s a question we’ve asked ourselves since we started making snowboards.
Because if a snowboard could be recycled, not only would it save materials, but it would reduce its overall carbon footprint by eliminating “end-of-life” impacts.
Tossing a dead board in the landfill has a measurable carbon footprint that we calculated in 2020 when we completed a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of our snowboard production. The LCA measured the approximate carbon impact of every stage of a Jones board's lifecycle - from sourcing raw materials, to manufacturing, to shipping, to throwing a board in the trash.
Over 1,000,000 snowboards have been produced each year since 1995. Where do they all go?
With few exceptions, most skis and snowboards end up in the landfill. Re-Up Tech is part of the solution.
Upcycling: creating value
Giving snowboards a second ride
100%
of used snowboards can be recycled through Re-Up Tech
95%
of material from old snowboards can be either recycled or reused in new boards
Second ride
upcycled materials are then inserted into the wood core of new boards as performance stringers
We are always looking for ways to reduce our impact, so we got serious about finding a solution to this snowboard recycling challenge after finding out the “end-of-life” impacts from the LCA. Learning from dead ends, and doubling down on successes, we are ecstatic to announce that our relentless experimenting has finally paid off!
Introducing Jones Re-Up Tech - the world’s first snowboard recycling program that collects dead boards and re-uses the materials in new snowboards through a groundbreaking reclamation process.
How Re-Up Tech works.
One of the many reasons Re-Up Tech is so exciting is that it brings “circularity” to the ski and snowboard industry by eliminating waste and circulating old materials into new products.
The Re-Up process is capable of reusing approximately 95% of almost any snowboard ever made. The ingenious nature of the technology allows us to recycle snowboards of any brand, model or year and use the materials to make new Jones boards.
Step 1
Step 1
Collect boards, ship them back to factory
The Re-Up process begins by collecting warranty boards and retired boards from riders and shops around the world. The dead boards are then shipped to our factory using ocean freight. Shipping them back on a slow boat has the smallest carbon footprint possible, and we believe the benefits of recycling still outweigh this unavoidable impact.
When the retired boards arrive at the factory they begin the recycling process along with a small number of defective ‘C’ grade’ Jones boards that got rejected at some stage in the manufacturing process. The ability to recycle factory rejects is another huge benefit of Re-Up Tech.
Step 2
Step 2
Prepare the boards for recycling
Once back at the factory, the recycling process begins by sanding every board’s topsheet and base to remove any dirt, wax, or solvents. The next step is to remove the steel edges and steel inserts using a mechanical process. The edges and inserts are then set aside to be recycled with other scrap steel.
Without the edges and inserts, the board is now a sandwich of p-tex, epoxy, wood core, stringer material and topsheet. This metal-free sandwich is then flattened in a press to remove any rocker profile or 3D contours.
Step 3
Step 3
Make a six board sandwich and slice it up
Six flattened boards of any brand or material composition are then stacked, glued and pressed together to create a 24 layer thick sandwich of snowboard materials. The sandwich includes six layers of p-tex, six layers of wood core, six layers of stringers and six layers of topsheet material.
The sandwich is then cut into thin slices that include all 24 layers of recycled material. These thin slices are what gets inserted as performance stringers in the construction of new wood cores.
Step 4
Step 4
Insert the slices into new wood cores
The thin slices of recycled material are then inserted into new wood cores in the place of a traditional stringer material. Because the layers in the slice are oriented at 90 degrees relative to the word core, base and topsheet, they offer remarkable dampening and stiffening properties. In both factory and on-snow tests, these slices of compressed recycled materials proved to be some of the highest performance stiffening materials we’ve ever tested.
By using only thin slices of each recycled board, the effects of material variability are negated. It doesn’t matter if one board had a faster base + carbon stringers and another board did not. In testing, the performance of any slice, no matter its composition, is virtually identical. The recycled materials are only used in specific areas for dampening and stiffening. The majority of the wood core is made with responsibly harvested virgin wood like a traditional wood core.
Eco-performance
The best stringers we've ever created
Re-Up Tech reduces our impact by eliminating carbon stringers and improves board performance! Re-Up stringers absorb vibrations and are more torsionally stable than any stringers we’ve tested.
90° layup of wood and fiberglass offers:
- Precise response
- Supreme vibration dampening
- “No Flap” extended nose shapes
- Responsible and high performance alternative to carbon stringers
The result of re-up tech
Hovercraft 2.0: Our most responsible board yet.
be part of the change
How to return your board for recycling.
The future of Re-Up Tech is dependent on securing a steady supply of dead boards to recycle. The more boards we get back, the more boards we can build using the technology.
To make it easy to recycle with us, we offer two ways to return a board.
Return the board directly to Jones.
When you ship a retired board directly back to us through our website, you will receive a $50 or 50€ credit towards the purchase of a new Jones board.
We will provide a pre-paid shipping label at no cost to customers in the continental United States and select European countries. To receive a shipping label, fill out the return form here.
We need your dead boards!
We need your dead boards!
The more boards we get back, the more boards we can build using the technology. This is where riders like you come in.
Return the board to one of our collection partners.
You can bring the board to one of our participating collection partners. If an incentive is offered, it will be determined by that Jones dealer.
Our network of collection sites in the United States and Europe will be expanding.
Become a retail collection partner
Become a retail collection partner
Calling all authorized Jones dealers! Join our growing network of collection partners and help us keep snowboards out of the landfill.
The future of Re-Up Tech.
For the 2023-24 season, only the new Hovercraft 2.0 snowboard will feature Re-Up Tech. We are planning to incorporate Re-Up Tech in more models in future seasons depending on the available supply of boards to recycle.
For now, Re-Up Tech is a Jones exclusive technology. In the future, once a snowboard recycling supply chain is established, we hope to allow other brands to incorporate Re-Up Tech in their production. To accomplish our goal of keeping every dead snowboard out of the landfill, we will need the support of every rider and snowboard brand.
Re-Up Tech is undoubtedly one of the most significant achievements for Jones since our foundation.
We have always strived to make products that balance performance, sustainability and innovation. Re-Up Tech is a perfect reflection of the Jones design ethos and we can’t wait to see how much positive change we can inspire in the ski and snowboard industry as we continue to develop it.
Re-Up Tech FAQ
About the program
About the program
When you ship a retired board directly back to us through our website, you will receive a $50 or 50€ credit towards the purchase of a new Jones board.
When you return a board to one of our participating collection partners, if an incentive is offered, it will be determined by that Jones dealer.
There are two ways to return a board for recycling. You can either ship the board back to us with a prepaid shipping label we will provide, or you can bring the board to one of our participating collection partners.
We offer free ground shipping to customers in the continental United States and select European countries. To receive a shipping label, fill out the return form here.
If you ship the board back to us, we ask that you do not use a box to save on packaging waste. Just slap the shipping label on the board.
Our network of collection sites in the United States and Europe will be expanding.
Yes! We will accept all the retired snowboards you have.
We can recycle any brand, model or year snowboard.
Not at this time, but it is possible to recycle splitboards and skis using Re-Up Tech.
The board must be intact (not broken in half) and made with a wood core.
Is your board ready to recycle?
Is your board ready to recycle?
Deciding when your board is really dead and ready for recycling can be the tricky part. To help you decide whether your old snowboard is ready to recycle we’ve created a reference guide that highlights what unrepairable board damage looks like.
About the technology
About the technology
Re-Up Tech stands for Recycling old snowboards and Upcycling the materials into new snowboards. The process begins by collecting old boards that are no longer usable. We then remove the metal edges and inserts for recycling, lightly sand the topsheet and base to remove oil and dirt, stack and glue six boards together, slice the stack to create a thin piece of material that includes layers from all six boards, then use the slice in the wood core of new boards in place of stringers.
The Hovercraft 2.0 snowboard features a nose stringer in the wood core made with Re-Up Tech.
No, Re-Up Tech stringers absorb vibrations and are more torsionally stable than any stringers we’ve ever tested.
Our goal is to make the ski/snowboard industry more circular by keeping as many boards as possible out of the landfill or incinerator. We strive to find value in old boards by upcycling the collected materials and giving them a second life in a new board.
In 2020 we completed an LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) of our snowboard production that calculated the impact of every stage in a Jones board’s life cycle. View our LCA here.
Our goal is to minimize shipping impacts by using ground shipping to return customer’s boards to our collection sites and ocean freight to ship pallets of boards back to our factory.
The Hovercraft 2.0 snowboard is made with a sustainably harvested wood core, recycled edges + recycled sidewalls, a flax topsheet with no varnish, and it’s built with bio-resin and solar power.
The goal is to introduce Re-Up Tech on all models. The key will be to secure a consistent supply chain of boards to recycle. Once the process is dialed, and we have a collection program established, we also hope to share the technology with other brands to help the ski/snowboard industry reduce our overall impact.
The technology was a collaboration between Jones and SWS Board Sports.
No, Re-Up Tech is a proprietary technology to Jones at this time. When the process and supply chain are established, we will share it.
Re-Up Tech is the only recycling technology that finds real value in old boards. We can recycle old boards of any brand and use the materials to make new boards. Other recycling technologies can harvest materials from dead snowboards, but the materials are not immediately upcycled into new snowboards.
1000 snowboards taken from warranty returns and factory 3rds were recycled to produce the 2024 Hovercraft 2.0 snowboards.
No, since 2021, our Re-Up jackets have used 750 fill power upcycled down.
About the Re-Up credit
About the Re-Up credit
No, you can only use one Re-Up credit per board.
Yes, you can use a Re-Up credit towards the purchase of any board on the Jones webstore.
Yes, you can use the Re-Up credit in addition to another discount code.
Yes, you can use the Re-Up credit towards a pro-purchase.
Redeem your Re-Up credit at checkout just like any other discount code.
No, Re-Up credits may only be redeemed on the Jones webstore at this time.
The evolution of a legend
Hovercraft 2.0
After fourteen seasons, we are excited to debut a completely redesigned Hovercraft Series that not only builds on its performance legacy, but also sets a new standard in responsible snowboard production.
