BEIRUT — “I hate it, it smells like an ashtray,” Paul Abbas, Lebanon’s only surfboard maker, told Al-Monitor as he passed thousands of used cigarette butts meticulously placed to form the base of a stand-up-paddle board at his workshop in Lebanon’s seaside town of Byblos.

Joslin Kehdy, the founder of Recycle Lebanon and co-creator of the ‘cigarette board,’ offered a different opinion while grabbing handfuls of butts from a bag. “I don’t mind it the smell … because I have been picking cigarettes up a lot, people will see me in the street and say ‘I have cigarettes for you,'" he told Al-Monitor. "I actually don’t smoke, which shocks people who ask me 'how can you handle the smell,' but we are handling so much trash in Lebanon that I don’t notice.”

Collected over three months in Beirut’s Hamra neighborhood as part of a Recycle Lebanon initiative, the cigarettes will create a protective and bouyant layer for the board. The project, completed today, is a production of EcoSouk, an environmentally friendly market founded by Kehdy with support from the AUB Neighborhood Initiative and TobaccoFreeAUB.

The board idea has been in their heads since 2016, inspired by the worsening pollution in Lebanon. Kehdy told Al-Monitor, “From our coastal landfills to the sewage going into the sea, to air pollution and incinerators, I felt like I needed to create a symbol to represent them ... We really are throwing away such a rich biodiversity and treasure.”