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“Addictions can be very, very bad but addiction itself is not bad.
It’s a case of what you’re addicted to.
You better live each day like it’s your last, ‘cos one day you’re going to be right”.
Ray Charles.
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The Plastiki began her momentous voyage on Saturday 20 March 2010, setting sail from under San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate bridge on an adventure that is taking her crew across the Pacific Ocean to Sydney on a mission to beat plastic based waste that end up in the world’s oceans.
How much waste? A shitload that’s how much ……
It is estimated that between 60 – 80% of the marine pollution in the world is comprised of plastic materials and in many regions in the northern and southern Gyres, plastic materials constitute as much as 90 to 95% of the total.
Scientists estimate that every year at least 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die when they become entangled in plastic pollution or ingest it.
According to Project Aware, 15 billion pounds of plastic are produced in the U.S. every year and only 1 billion pounds are recycled. It is estimated that in excess of 38 billion plastic bottles and 25 million Styrofoam cups end up in landfill and although plastic bottles are 100% recyclable, on average only 20% are actually recycled.
Adventure Ecology founder and environmentalist David de Rothschild and his crew; Jo Royle, David Thomson, Olav Heyerdahl, along with National Geographic filmmaker Max Jourdan and Myoo Media’s Vern Moen set sail on the Plastiki which is a unique 60ft catamaran engineered from approximately 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and srPET, a fully recyclable material.
The Plasticki is an “off the grid” vessel which relies primarily on renewable energy systems which power and sustain the boat and her crew during the 11,000 nautical mile journey to Oz.
The Plastiki began her adventure nearly four years ago after taking inspiration from a report issued by UNEP called ‘Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas’ and Thor Heyerdahl’s epic 1947 expedition, The Kon Tiki.
David’s idea was to put together a compelling and pioneering expedition to not only inform but also captivate, activate and educate the world that waste is fundamentally inefficient design principle.
The alternative proposition is that with more efficient design and a smarter understanding of how people use materials, principally plastic, waste can be transformed into a valuable resource, in turn helping to lessen our plastic fingerprint on the world’s oceans.
The expedition was influenced by the principles of “cradle to cradle” design and bio-mimicry and was designed by a multifaceted team from the fields of marine science, sustainable design, boat building, architecture and material science and the boat itself is testament to how these principles can be put into action; here are some stats:
* The Plastiki is engineered almost entirely from 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles that provide 68% of the boat’s buoyancy.
* A unique recyclable plastic material made from srPET makes up her super structure.
* The mast is a reclaimed aluminum irrigation pipe.
* The sail is hand-made from recycled PET cloth.
* The secondary bonding is reinforced using a newly developed organic glue made from cashew nuts and sugar cane.
* It relies primarily on renewable energy systems including; solar panels, wind and trailing propeller turbines, bicycle generators, a urine-to-water recovery and rain water catchment system and a hydroponic rotating cylinder garden.
- DdR, pink hat, flag, bridge.
David is the founder of Adventure Ecology, an organization that harnesses the power of dreams, adventures and stories in order to inspire educate and activate individuals, communities and business’s to start moving towards a smarter more sustainable way of living and acting.
And in 2006 David spent over 100 days crossing The Arctic to get to the North Pole, got to the South Pole and was part of a team that broke a world record for the fastest ever crossing of the Greenland Icecap.
Another team member is Olav Heyerdahl who is the grandson of Thor Heyerdahl whose 1947 ‘Kon-Tiki’ expedition took its crew across the Pacific Ocean in a replica of an ancient Inca raft made from balsa wood and other native materials.
Olav undertook the “Tangaroa” expedition which with five others built an updated raft that included a centreboard and a steering technique called "Guarras". During his time at sea, Olav drew comparisons from today’s Pacific and that of the Ocean his grandfather crossed in 1947.
Using the original Kon-Tiki log book and Thor’s personal diary, the crew noted a number of significant oceanic changes; in the Humbolt current there was a new colossal path of garbage and marine debris, also, whilst the Kon-Tiki’s most common meal had been tuna, the Tangaroa could only catch one tuna in their entire trip.
So there it is, more at their site here, as well as how the trip is progressing and 2 vids below; the first on what went into making the boat and the second being on the size of the ocean and plastic problem …..
