The design team from Tribord, our water sports brand*, innovated over a period of over 18 months to design and produce water booties made from 15% recycled oyster shells.
Designed for surfers, windsurfers and stand-up paddle boarders, these booties are more environmentally friendly than your traditional booties. They're ideal for protecting your feet during practice while providing maximum grip on the board.
How are these recycled?
These booties were designed in Basque country, from oysters recycled in Brittany and made in the north of France.
Our Tribord brand research and development center created within an environment that supports the water sports that they're designed for, making conception and testing efficient. For the raw material, the teams collaborated with a company from Brittany specialized in the recycling of shells from the oyster industry, giving oyster shells a second life. They are dried, crushed, milled, then mixed with SEBS thermoplastic and processed into pellets.
From protocol tests to usage tests, the Tribord team readjusted the basic formula to ensure maximum shell powder in the composition of the product, without altering its adhesion properties. In the end, the booties are made of 15% recycled oyster powder and the rest is SEBS. It is in Wattrelos in the north of France, in the Decathlon factory, that the granules are then heated and injected into molds, before solidifying and taking the shape of the slipper.
"This product existed for a long time in our shelves in a PVC version. We decided in 2011 to modify the only component, the elastomer. It was the first step, but very soon we wanted to go further, developing a more eco-friendly product without altering the product's adhesion properties."
Edouard Du Doré (Tribord Product Manager)
*Our surfing brand is now Olaian, read more about it here!
