At the end of last year, Joffrey Maluski and Loïc Forques set out on the Adour river in a plastic canoe made from 600 used bottles. The film "PLASTIQU'ADOUR" retraces this adventure.
For 19 days, between October and November 2021, Joffrey Maluski and Loïc Forques set off on an improbable journey along the rivers and roads of the Pyrenees. The aim? To retrace the waste cycle from the mountains to the ocean, and to show that adventure can be lived close to home, with very little means.
"To do this, we built and towed by bike a canoe made of bamboo and 600 plastic bottles from Biarritz to Tarbes, before climbing the Col du Tourmalet (source of the Adour river)," explain the two friends. "We then picked up the boat in Tarbes, launched it in Aire sur l'Adour and sailed down the river to the ocean in Bayonne". In the film "PLASTIQU'ADOUR" (produced by Umber Studio and available below), we follow them on this eco-adventure.
Joffrey Maluski is a 27 year old outdoor photographer from Fréjus. His partner Loïc Forques is the co-founder of Umber, the video production agency based in Biarritz and the source of the above film. Supported for this journey by several brands, including Suunto, which will offer refurbished watches on Private Sport Shop from April 9, the two friends wanted to put their finger on a major environmental issue, the plastic found in the oceans (every minute, 17 tons of plastic are dumped in the world's seas).
To reach the end of their journey, the construction of the boat was an essential first step. The boat was made from 600 bottles collected at the Bayonne Ham Festival. Held together by bamboo from the Gers region and serflex, the bottles were used to create a 3.80-meter-long, 90-kg boat, robust and stable enough to accommodate the two adventurers, their equipment and two bicycles.
Joffrey Maluski and Loïc Forques began by towing their boat on their bikes and rowing it down the Adour river. Although the original idea was also to tow the boat to the summit of the Col du Tourmalet, the weight prevented them from doing so. But the two adventurers insisted on making it to the summit, leaving their boat behind in Tarbes. Once back down from the Tourmalet, they started rowing from Aire-sur-l'Adour. And despite a capsize during which they lost just one paddle, they managed to complete the loop they had set out on and reach Anglet, 19 days and 440 km after leaving Biarritz.