Dunkin Donuts was founded in Massachusetts and has always had strong ties to the region — Dunkin is arguably more New England than Starbucks is Seattle.
Now, a New Englander has used the breakfast food chain’s polystyrene foam cups to catch waves after they’re done catching coffee.
Korey Nolan — a Plymouth, Massachusetts, native who now lives in New Hampshire — made a surfboard using 700 disposable Dunkin’ cups, and the invention earned him a second-place finish in the international Creators & Inventors Upcycle Contest, The Boston Globe reported.
“You can’t turn a corner in New England without hitting one,” he said about the ubiquitous chain, NECN reported. “I picked them up on my own, on the street the trash.”
Nolan said the surfboard is heavier than most, at 15 pounds, but that it’s buoyant.
“It rides great,” he told the Globe. “Once you’re on it in the water, you wouldn’t know it’s twice as heavy as a standard board of the same size.”
Nolan told the newspaper he also put a call out to friends and family to save their Dunkin cups and ended up with about 1,000. He said he has more than 200 left over from the build, in which he used bamboo stringers and a plant-based epoxy to stick the cups together into a single form.
For good measure, Nolan used plastic straws to make the surfboard’s fins. Both polystyrene foam and plastic straws — which are not biodegradable — have drawn the ire of environmentalists, and many communities around Maine have considered ordinances to ban polystyrene or reduce its use.
And Dunkin’ itself won’t be able to supply Nolan’s upcycling projects much longer. The company has committed to fully transitioning away from polystyrene cups by 2020.
For his part, Nolan said he’ll be happy when he can’t find enough foam cups to make another surfboard.
“That would be great if I didn’t have the supply for it,” he told the Globe. “We are so reliant on convenience, and disposables, and stuff we take and throw away and go about our day and don’t wonder where it goes, and it’s causing issues.”