Sustainable Surf is a California-based nonprofit that seeks to use surf culture to get people interested in environmental issues concerning our oceans. When they recently teamed up with Mafia Bags, an upcycling bag manufacturing company, to create a useful backpack, they found the perfect designer for it: Yves Behar.

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)

As an avid surfer and swimmer, Behar has an interest in both ocean preservation and in developing a practical way to carry both a sopping wetsuit and his laptop in the same bag. The result of the three-way collaboration is the Deep Blue Bag, an upcycled backpack that's practical for urban dwellers whether you surf or not:

I thought the water bottle trick, and the material used to secure it, was particularly nifty.

I was also interested to learn that sails, each of which obviously contain a huge amount of material, are so readily discarded that they can make up a viable upcycling source. In this video with Adam Savage reviewing the bag, Mafia Bags co-founder Marcos Mafia explains how that happens, as well as his production process and some of the bag's finer details not covered in the video above:

The campaign has already been successfully funded on Kickstarter, but there's still 48 days left in the campaign if you'd like to pick one up. Buy-in starts at $175, and all of the proceeds will go towards funding Sustainable Surf's mission.

Enter a caption (optional)

Enter a caption (optional)