Adventurer to Sail Boat Made of Waste Plastic Bottles Around the World
World class adventurer, National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and a descendant of the legendary Rothschild banking family, David de Rothschild, will attempt to do what no one has done before, sail half-way around the world from California to Australia on a catamaran made 90% of recycled plastic waste powered only by the wind and the sun.
However this is not the first journey to be made across the Pacific using plastic waste. Last year a raft made of 15,000 bottles called the Junk successfully made a similar journey from California to Hawaii in 87 days in order to promote awareness of the global plastic waste problem.
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Inspired by legendary explorer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl’s epic journey from South America to Polynesia on a balsa wood raft called Kontiki, Rothschild’s Plastiki will carry several scientists who will gather data on the tremendous amount of plastic waste floating in the middle of the Pacific. Reports say the waste is twice the size of Texas and continues to grow daily. They expect the journey to take over 100 days and will stop in Hawaii, Tuvalu, and Fiji before reaching Sydney’s famous harbor.
Besides raising awareness about the mounting problem of plastic waste in the oceans, Rothschild hopes to show that this waste can also be seen as a resource. He’ll prove this cradle to cradle approach by using plastic bottle waste to build his boat and then dismantle it upon completion of the journey. The plastic will then be recycled and will ultimately become other usable products like fleece jackets or reusable shopping bags which can later be recycled again and the cycle will continue as long as people recycle.
This awareness campaign comes at a pivotable time for the recycling industry because it faces a crisis due to falling raw materials prices. This drastic drop in commodity prices coupled with budget cuts due to the economic downturn has forced some municipalities to discontinue their recycling programs. Throughout the country countless recycling companies have been forced to go out of business while others have stopped taking in recyclables due to growing stockpiles of waste accumulated as they wait for market demand and prices to increase.
The growing concern over plastic waste also inspired a recent CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) documentary about the plastic bag. The video can be seen here and it gives the history of the plastic bag and paints a dim picture for the future of the plastic bag. Several cities, states, and countries around the world have set bans against or have imposed heavy taxes on the use of plastic bags in grocery stores in attempt to curb the problem of quickly filling landfills and plastic bags becoming more ubiquitous than birds in trees around the world.
To learn more about the floating island of plastic waste in the Pacific check out Captain Charles Moore’s informative and scary speech recently given at TED Talks called “Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch“.
>> Also Read Boat Made of 16,000 Plastic Bottles to Sail from Cali to Australia
Image credit: jonrawlinson at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
