When Mohammed Alamgir first began to surf in his hometown of Cox’s Bazar, in the Bay of Bengal, he was faced with a problem: surfers are rare in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries, and surfboards rarer still. He borrowed a battered board from a friend, who was left it by a visiting surfing charity from Wahiawa, Hawaii.
Now that the sport is slowly gaining popularity in the fishing port and tourist resort, Alamgir, 24, has plans to launch what he believes may be the country’s first surfboard business, making boards from recycled materials.
Alamgir, who works as a lifeguard at the beach, is employed by Seasafe, a project set up by Britain’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and Bangladesh’s Centre for the Prevention of Injury and Research. He first hit on the idea of using recycled material from the “rescue belts” his fellow lifeguards made out of old fishing-net floats.
The inspiration for Alamgir’s first prototype was a rescue board – the distinctive yellow RNLI boards used by lifeguards on beaches across Britain – made from recycled foam. He shaped it with a grinder, to the same proportions as an RNLI board. But the foam didn’t work: the board took in too much water and sank. He also tried jute, a natural, biodegradable fibre that is grown in Bangladesh. That too failed.
Next, he tried a different type of foam, used to pack air-conditioning units exported from Thailand to Dhaka. He set up a workshop at home. Using YouTube videos downloaded to his phone, he learned how placing a strip of timber down the middle of the board lent it shape and stability.
Alamgir, the son of a shrimp wholesaler and one of a number of lifeguards to patrol the main beach at Cox’s, has so far saved 20 lives with his recycled rescue board.
All the materials, apart from the foam, were sourced locally. Sheets of fibreglass, used by fishermen to repair their boats, helped to make the board watertight. His rescue board cost about £160 to make, a fraction of the £1,000 it costs for an RNLI model. Any future boards would be even cheaper to produce, he said.
He has now made two rescue boards and eight surfboards, and is seeking a financial backer to make his business commercially viable.
