Life’s a Beach Teams Up With D.A.M

At Life’s A Beach our goals are to reduce the amount of plastic waste entering our oceans through education and awareness as well as practical action such as organising beach cleans and providing organisations with multi-use products to reduce the use of single use plastics.  So, when we heard about DAM (Distributed Additive Manufacturing) we were very excited as they are ticking every Life’s a Beach box with their focus on creating products exclusively from plastic waste using their unique, large format 3D printing machines.  We got in touch and chatted with Nate, DAM’s founder and were amazed to discover that they could literally take the plastic waste from a Life’s A Beach organised beach clean and magically turn into the coolest looking surf board we have ever seen!  

DAM was the brainchild of Nate and began when he discovered his first 3D printer in a nuclear fallout shelter in Norway. He was trying to figure out how to make the first 3D printed hydrogen fuel cell which led to a PhD in Design Engineering at Imperial College London. Frustrated by the high cost of most printers, Nate built the largest printer in the country to prove his theory of Disruptive Distributed Manufacturing. 

Nate explains how the process works- essentially plastic waste is collected, sorted, washed and ground down into what’s called flake. That flake plastic gets melted into a long fishing line like ‘ink’ that the 3D printer uses. The ink is then fed into the printer which builds up layer upon layer of melted, recycled material that becomes a functional product with a much smaller carbon footprint.

Amazing stuff right?  Life’s A Beach plans to work with DAM on future organised beach cleans and will be encouraging organisations to take the recovered beach waste and create their very own branded surfboard. To learn more about DAM, click here.

For more info about organising a beach clean in your area or help with reduction of single use plastics, please contact sophie@lifesabeach.org