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Pacific Adventure on a Plastic Boat

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Have you guys heard about the Plastiki?  A boat made out of used plastic bottles and cashew nut glue made it all the way from San Francisco to Sydney!  To learn more about why on earth someone would want to do this, check out the video and story below:

Plastiki’s journey to inspire and educate people the world over to become agents of change and stop  the irresponsible use and disposal of plastics came to an end on Monday.

The 20m catamaran made up of 12,500 recycled plastic bottles and relying primarily on renewable energy systems, ended its epic four-month, 128 day voyage after spanning 14,816km.

Skipper David De Rothschild had set out on the expedition to raise awareness about the amount of plastic waste being dumped in the sea.  The eco-adventurer was inspired in part by Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 journey on a raft called the Kon-Tiki, which travelled 4300 nautical miles from South America to Polynesia.  Before the vessel left San Francisco, he had told The Australian’s Wish magazine: “We are really trying to pose the question: Is plastic the enemy or is it our misunderstanding of how we dispose of it?  We are not advocating the banning of plastics, just the banning or reducing of dumb, single-use plastics.”

David and his crew hope their journey makes people realize how garbage is threatening the health of  the planet and its inhabitants.  Primarily drawing attention to the health of our oceans, in particular the colossal amounts of plastic debris, by showcasing waste as a resource and demonstrating real world solutions through the design and construction of the Plastiki.

As evidenced by the creation of the Plastiki, David says plastic and other waste doesn’t have to end up in a landfill.  “Around plastics, we need to reduce, reuse, recycle and the fourth R—refuse the single-use plastics,” he says. “I hope that the Plastiki showcases that we’ve used innovative materials, … new glues that we’ve actually engineered out of cashew nuts and sugar, which show that there are solutions to those problems out there.  We can all do something about it.”

For more information visit:

http://www.theplastiki.com/

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