plastiki

Plastiki, a boat constructed of discarded soft-drink bottles, arrived Monday in Sydney, Australia, completing an 11,000-mile journey across the Pacific Ocean intended to draw attention to the way humans treat the environment.

The 60-foot catamaran set sail from Sausalito, Calif., just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, on March 20. Buoyancy was provided by more 12,000 recycled 2-liter bottles donated by Waste Management, which were washed, cleaned, and pressurized before being installed in the boat's twin pontoons.

Banking heir and expedition leader David de Rothschild runs the Adventure Ecology educational organization and is the mastermind behind the … Read more

On March 20, a very odd boat set sail from Sausalito, Calif., just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Destination: Sydney, Australia.

This was the Plastiki, a vessel made entirely of plastic, including 12,000 recycled bottles, built to showcase the world's garbage problem. It is the brainchild of banking heir and expedition leader David de Rothschild.

That was more than three months ago, and in the weeks since, the boat has bobbed and weaved its way across well more than 6,000 miles of open ocean on its way Down Under.

In recent days, the boat and its … Read more

British adventurer and bank dynasty heir David de Rothschild plans to sail from San Francisco to Australia--in a boat made from discarded soft-drink bottles.

No sharp epoxy smells greet us on San Francisco's Pier 31 when we go to visit de Rothschild on a sunny weekday afternoon. Instead, popping sounds from bottles being re-inflated echo like a huge popcorn machine in the northern end of a hangar. This is where the strange vessel, called "Plastiki," is being built.

In part of this hangar the size of a football field, 12,000 recycled bottles donated by the Waste Management company are being washed, cleaned, and pressurized for their new role--acting as flotation devices in the two pontoons of the 60-foot high-tech catamaran.

"If we really want to move from Planet 1.0 to Planet 2.0, we need to really start taking action and stop just talking," de Rothschild says as he arrives at the construction site.

The tall, bearded 30-year-old--a charismatic scion of the British Rothschild bank dynasty and the youngest British person to ever reach both the North and South poles--demands attention as he circles the busy site.

He runs the Adventure Ecology educational organization and is the mastermind behind the Plastiki project, which, among other things, aims to change people's perception of garbage. Today, most plastic bottles in the U.S. are not recycled, according to environmental organizations, and instead end up in the world's landfills and oceans.

"Thirty-nine billion plastic bottles are consumed in the U.S. every year," de Rothschild says. "Only 20 percent are recycled. Imagine what that is in terms of resources."

The lofty goal of a voyage to Australia has spurred a number of inventions. The skeletal hull, decks, and cabin of the boat, for example, are made of composite Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic panels consisting of layers of self-reinforcing PET skins, a woven fabric made of reused plastic.

"What we have been exploring with is biocomposites, bioglues, biopolymers," de Rothschild says, "things that are not just going to be positive for this project, but have ongoing implications." … Read more