ABOUT US

WAW means Wave After Wave

…because our mission is to inspire wave after wave of bodysurfers to elevate this incredible sport to new levels of performance and renown, while actively leaving the ocean better than we found it.

How do we do this? By making our BadFish Handplanes out of reclaimed ocean plastic, by planting 100 trees for every 1 we use to make our Timber Handplanes, and by increasing the profile and accessibility of the sport.

We Are The Ocean

We do the right thing, not the cheapest or most profitable thing – quality is just as important as sustainability, which is why we provide our WAWRRIORS Lifetime Warranty & our money-back guarantee. We’re not just thinking of the product and the ocean, we’re considering the entirety of the individual who wants to be a part of this – that’s why we make eco-friendly sustainable products created to serve a purpose rather than merely provide a product, and that purpose is first and foremost getting in the ocean and having fun!

We live for adventure and community is everything to us, which motivates us to help people get involved with bodysurfing through the Australian Bodysurfing Classic we’ve been running since 2016 or via inspo from our active and popular WAW Handplanes Instagram. Our founder Rikki is a passionate bodysurfer and if you’ve spent any time on the beaches of Sydney, you’ve probably run into him! We’re a family business run by a husband-and-wife team, with Lucy less visible though no less important.

 “I'm aware that our supply chain is very much a small solution to a very large problem. Using the business to inspire others is a huge goal of mine, and one of the biggest issues I had in setting this whole thing up was people in industry saying that it was impossible, you can't do this, it will be too expensive, it won't work, the machines won't handle it, you can't use that material. I constantly faced that hurdle. But now there's a product that I can physically hold and say, look – this is what you can do and this is what can be done. You can't tell me it can't be done anymore.”

-Rikki Gilbey, Founder of WAW Handplanes

 So how did we end up creating the world’s first bodysurfing handplane made from reclaimed ocean plastics?

It all began back in the early 90s with a move from the city to the beach. Rikki suddenly found himself living in Devon in South West England after the family moved there from London. After spending an unusually beautiful English summer on the beach every single day, Rikki began to fall in love with the ocean.

 Fishing soon became an obsession, with Rikki’s enterprising streak evident in bike rides up the coast to enter fishing competitions and win pocket money. Indeed, it was Rikki’s interest in fishing that led to the unique skillset which resulted in WAW – uni studies in Marine Geography led to a placement with a marine conservation NGO on the island of Samos in Greece (where he met an Aussie girl called Lucy, who was working for the same org). He developed his knowledge around the physical processes of the coastline, diving and snorkeling every day to map the ocean floor.

After a five week whirlwind romance, Lucy’s contract finished. Rikki stayed for another five months to finish up the job – before taking a chance and following Lucy back out to Australia with $5 in his pocket. Arriving in Sydney, he pinched his girlfriend’s bright purple bike (soon resprayed black) and spent six months cycling the length of Sydney from Palm Beach to Cronulla, exploring new beaches and lagoons while fishing all day.

 “Knowing the coast and topography of the ocean is important to both fishing and surfing. I discovered many, many spots which I now surf that I used to fish – that also led me to the sustainability side of things because fishing as an industry is quite polluting; a lot of people in the fishing world leave a lot of plastics behind, a lot of fishing bait wrappers, hooks, and lines. When I was growing up in England, there wasn't much of an awareness around that kind of pollution. I would be a bit lazy with some of the rubbish and stuff that I was handling. Then when I came to Australia and discovered how pristine things can be, I stumbled upon the awareness around plastics and the issues that they're causing. I very much cleaned up my act.”

Rikki soon discovered surfing and spent the next three years obsessing over the sport. Meanwhile, he built up his skills as a carpenter working for his father-in-law’s construction firm. Realising where his passion lay, he got himself a job with Patagonia – world leaders in sustainable business…

The Birth of WAW

One day back in 2014 a bunch of handplanes came into the Patagonia store from an American company. One of Rikki’s colleagues invited him out for a bash on Bondi Beach and he fell in love with the sport immediately.

Despite having become quite an adept surfer, there was something different about handplane bodysurfing – Rikki felt even more “at one” with the sea. With that imported handplane costing $250, he knew he could do better. So he set about making his own handplanes from reclaimed timber, creating straps from old Patagonia wetsuits which had been returned as part of their Worn Wear sustainability initiative. He brought his first batch of handplanes down to Manly Markets and immediately sold out. So he made some more.

Unbeknownst to Rikki, the store manager at Patagonia had been very impressed with his product. He’d secretly sent one to the head buyer for the brand, who was also very impressed. Before you could say “wow!”, every Patagonia store in Australia began stocking WAW Handplanes.

For 4 years, Rikki manufactured all of the handplanes himself out of timber. As sales increased, he realised that his full-time job was manufacturing the product, with trying to run the business as his side gig. That was when he decided to scale up – and the idea of reclaiming ocean plastics became a driving force.

Australia’s only recycled ocean plastic supply chain

 Although the initial product offering of timber handplanes was doing exceptionally well, Rikki had a bigger vision – cleaning up the sea.

 “The supply chain that we set up in Australia is the first ocean plastic supply chain in Australia, period. I'm always aware that it's a pretty small scale system that I've set up, but what I love most about The BadFish Handplane is that it is a positive case study for utilising an ocean plastic supply chain locally. I want recycled plastics, recycled ocean plastics, to be seen as the norm. I want it to be seen everywhere so that it can inspire people, that the idea that someone has done something similar and that it is possible can create the power of knowledge to know that it could be done. We've inspired bigger brands to utilise similar material in their products just because they know it can be done.”

It took Rikki three years of painstaking research and development before he had successfully implemented a process to collect plastic from the Great Barrier Reef and turn it into handplanes – you can learn about the process here.

The original idea was to use nylon fishing nets and such, as there’s a lot of waste in that industry – but nylon is denser in water and so it sinks in the ocean, hence why they use it for fishing nets and fishing line. We just couldn't bring ourselves to make an ocean product that would sink. If lost, it needed to float up.

There’s still a large amount of fishing industry waste recycled into the handplanes, in addition to general hard plastics – cutlery, shampoo bottles, detergent bottles and soft plastics, plastic bags and that kind of stuff. It's about 80% of what you will find washed up on the beach. We clean that up, chop it up, melt it down, and turn it into something new.

100 trees planted for every 1 cut down

 With our timber handplanes, we plant one tree for every single handplane sold. We get about 100-to-150 handplanes out of each tree we cut down. So that tree results in at least 100 handplanes, and those 100 handplanes result in 100 new trees. We’re not content with simply cleaning up the oceans – it’s our duty to give back to the earth by creating positive environmental growth. We’ve become parents twice since starting the brand, and so yet another level of inspiration and drive has become integrated into the process. 

“It's just reconfirmed that protecting and cleaning the ocean is so important. When you've got someone of the next generation in your care, it really hammers home how much it's not about us, it’s about them. That’s already ingrained in our kids – “why would we leave this here, it's just going to hurt some animals or dirty up the beach”. It's inspiring how much the next generation care about this – but by the time they're old enough to do something about it, it might be too late. It's on us to do something now – and to help assist them when they take the reins and clean up the mess that we've created.”

Continuous Improvement Never Ends – Wave After Wave After Wave After…

 “One mantra I had going through the whole thing, and I can't remember where I read this, but it stuck with me – it said that if you're not failing, you're not even trying. So I knew that I was going to fail in many ways, but I also knew that I was going to learn from that. I think the one take away would be that there's so much value in failure. And if it does fail, it doesn't mean the end – it just means it's an opportunity for learning and for growth. So there's no reason not to give it a go!”

We’re inspiring wave after wave of humans to participate in a fun sport while actively ridding the ocean of the material that destroys it – are you with us?

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