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Published: 17 July 2027 | Reading time: 5 min | Category: Sustainability
Every year, more than 100,000 snowboards are produced worldwide. Most riders know what happens at the beginning of a board's life — the excitement of choosing it, the first runs, the seasons of progression. Fewer people think about what happens at the end.
Old boards pile up in garages, get left at the tip, or end up in landfill. The materials inside them — wood cores, fibreglass, epoxy resin, steel edges, p-tex bases — don't break down. They sit there.
Jones Snowboards decided to do something about it. The Re-Up program is their answer: a genuine, working system for taking retired and defective boards out of the waste stream and putting the materials back into new snowboards. Not as a marketing exercise — as actual construction technology that improves the performance of the boards it goes into.
As an official Jones EPICenter in Australia, we are a drop point for the Re-Up program. If you have a dead board taking up space, we can send it back where it came from.
Watch: How Re-Up Works
What Happens to a Board in the Re-Up Program
The process is more involved than just grinding up old boards and mixing the material into something new. Jones has engineered it into a genuine performance component.
Here's how it works step by step:
Step 1: Collection
Retired boards and warranty returns are collected from riders, shops, and Jones dealers worldwide — including through us here in Richmond. Boards that are genuinely at end of life: broken, delaminated, core shots, or simply too old to ride safely. Also included are factory-rejected 'C grade' Jones boards that didn't pass quality control at the manufacturing stage — boards that were never sold but would otherwise become waste.
Step 2: Transport
Collected boards are shipped back to the SWS factory in the UAE via ocean freight. Jones deliberately uses sea freight rather than air freight for this leg — the slower shipping method carries a significantly lower carbon footprint, and the calculus of recycling still comes out well ahead even accounting for the transport impact.
Step 3: Disassembly
At the factory, each board is fully broken down. Topsheets, bases, steel edges, and steel inserts are all removed and set aside for separate recycling streams. What remains is the structural core of the board: p-tex, epoxy, fibreglass, wood core material, and stringer components.
Step 4: The sandwich press
This is where it gets interesting. The remaining structural materials from multiple boards are stacked into a 24-layer thick sandwich and pressed flat. The result is a dense, compressed block of mixed snowboard materials — fibreglass, epoxy, wood, p-tex — bonded together under pressure.
That block is then cut into thin vertical slices. These slices become Re-Up Tech stringers — performance components that are inserted into the wood cores of new Jones snowboards.
Step 5: Performance
Here's the part that separates Re-Up from greenwashing: the stringers actually work. The orientation of the compressed layers creates genuine dampening and stiffening properties in the new board's core. Jones's testing shows consistent performance characteristics across Re-Up stringers despite the variable composition of the recycled source material — different boards, different ages, different constructions, all producing stringers that perform reliably.
The recycled material isn't a compromise or a cosmetic addition. It's a functional part of the board that makes it ride better.
The Boards Built With Re-Up Tech
The most prominent example is the Jones Hovercraft 2.0 — a powder board that combines Re-Up Tech stringers in the nose, a wood core, a flax topsheet, recycled edges and sidewalls, and bio-resin throughout. It's one of the most sustainably constructed production snowboards available, and it's a genuinely high-performance powder board — not a compromise product with an eco story attached.
Jones's broader sustainability commitment runs through their entire range: sustainably sourced wood cores, bio-based resins, reduced VOC manufacturing processes, and a factory energy program. Re-Up is the most visible part of that, but it sits within a wider approach that's been building for years.
How to Drop Off Your Board in Australia
As an official Jones EPICenter — one of a small number of authorised Jones dealers in Australia — we are an official Re-Up drop point.
If you have a retired board that's genuinely at end of life, bring it into the shop at 435A Bridge Rd, Richmond. We'll take it from there. The board gets consolidated with other returns and shipped to the SWS factory via ocean freight to begin the Re-Up process.
A few things worth knowing before you drop off:
- The program is for boards that are genuinely dead — not boards you're just tired of. If it's still rideable, it has more value as a second-hand board for someone learning
- Any brand of board can be dropped off, not just Jones. The Re-Up process works with snowboard materials regardless of who made the original board
- There's no charge for drop-off
- Bindings and boots are not part of the program — boards only
Why This Matters
Snowboarding has a complicated relationship with sustainability. The industry produces gear that involves significant materials and manufacturing, sells it to an audience that travels to mountains (often by air), and generates waste at end of product life. These are real tensions.
What Jones is doing with Re-Up doesn't resolve all of that. But it's a concrete, working response to one specific part of the problem — the end of a board's life — and it's engineered in a way that creates genuine value rather than just offsetting guilt.
As riders, the least we can do is make sure the boards we've ridden end up back in the system rather than at the tip. If you have a dead board at home, bring it in.
Shop Jones Snowboards
We stock the full Jones range in-store and online, including boards built with Re-Up Tech. If you want to ride a board made partly from recycled snowboards, or just want to know more about the program, come in and talk to us.
Shop Jones snowboards →
Contact our team →
Last updated: 17 July 2027 | Drop into the shop at 435A Bridge Rd, Richmond VIC 3121 or call 03 9421 2293
Frequently Asked Questions
The Jones Re-Up program is a snowboard recycling initiative that collects retired and defective snowboards, breaks them down, and uses the structural materials to create Re-Up Tech stringers — performance components inserted into the wood cores of new Jones snowboards. It's a closed-loop recycling system that keeps snowboard materials out of landfill and back into new boards.
Yes. As an official Jones EPICenter, Twelve Board Store at 435A Bridge Rd, Richmond is an official Re-Up drop point. Bring in your dead board and we'll take care of the rest.
No. The Re-Up program accepts snowboards of any brand. The recycling process works with snowboard materials regardless of manufacturer.
Yes — this is what separates it from a simple recycling program. The compressed, multi-layer slices cut from the Re-Up sandwich block create genuine dampening and stiffening properties when inserted as stringers in a new board's core. Jones's own testing confirms consistent performance characteristics across Re-Up stringers despite the variable composition of source material.
The Jones Hovercraft 2.0 is the most prominent example, combining Re-Up stringers with a range of other sustainable materials including a flax topsheet, bio-resin, and recycled edges and sidewalls. Re-Up Tech appears across several boards in the Jones range.
If your board is still safely rideable, consider selling it second-hand first — it has more value as a board for someone learning than as recycled stringer material. The Re-Up program is designed for boards that are genuinely at end of life: broken, delaminated, severe core shots, or structurally compromised.
Via ocean freight to the SWS factory. Jones deliberately uses sea freight rather than air freight specifically because of the lower carbon footprint, and calculates that the environmental benefit of recycling the materials still outweighs the unavoidable shipping impact.
