Each year, approximately 100 million sharks are killed by both commercial and recreational fishermen. Common seafood in many places worldwide, including parts of Asia and Australia; sharks are sought for their meat and fins. Their skin however, goes unused, too tough in texture for consumption. This discarded skin would provide a durable, biodegradable, fashionable resource for the protective skin of an umbrella.

The shark skin would be used as the sheltering skin of the umbrella in sole combination with a light weight, high strength, recycled aluminum structural framework. In an age of global warming and harmful UV rays, the umbrella could double as a fashionable, durable parasol, providing the user protection from the cancer causing rays of the sun.

The design would also incorporate an upcycling passport in the form contact information stamped into the aluminum of the umbrella, which would enable the user to easily return it back to the manufacturer if it were to break. At this point, the manufacturer would send out for the umbrella by means of bio degradable return packaging. Emulating the concept of waste equals food, the skin would then be detached from the structural frame and ground into a fertilizer for plants. The purely aluminum structure could be melted down to be upcycled into frames for future umbrellas.

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