At the end of last year, Joffrey Maluski and Loïc Forques set off 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 embarked on an improbable journey along the rivers and roads of the Pyrenees. The goal? To retrace the cycle of waste from the mountains to the ocean and to show that adventure can be lived close to home, with little means.
"To do this, we built and towed a canoe made of bamboo and 600 plastic bottles from Biarritz to Tarbes, before going up to the Col du Tourmalet (source of the Adour river)" explain the two friends. "We then recovered the boat in Tarbes to put it in the water in Aire sur l'Adour and go down the river to the ocean in Bayonne". In the film "PLASTIQU'ADOUR" (produced by Umber Studio and that you can discover below), we follow them in 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 built with 600 bottles collected during the Bayonne Ham Festival. Held together by bamboo from the Gers and serflex, the bottles were used to create a 3.80 meter long boat weighing 90 kg, strong and stable enough to accommodate the two adventurers, their equipment and two bikes.
It is with this funny boat, which obviously did not fail to attract the eye, that Joffrey Maluski and Loïc Forques first towed their boat by bike and rowed on the Adour river. If the original idea was also to tow the boat to the top of the Tourmalet pass, the weight prevented them from doing so. But the two adventurers still insisted on going to the top, leaving their boat in Tarbes. Once back down from the Tourmalet, they started rowing from Aire-sur-l'Adour. And despite a capsize during which they only lost a paddle, they managed to complete the loop planned at the start and to reach Anglet, 19 days and 440 km after their departure from Biarritz.