Plastiki
The Plastiki is the name of the sailing vessel which David de Rothschild will, with a five-man crew, sail across the Pacific Ocean starting in San Francisco, California in the summer of 2009, ending his journey in Sydney, Australia.
Rothschild, a prominent ecologist and descendant of the banking family, will sail across the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive sea of garbage sitting just below the surface of the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, in an attempt to draw attention to the amount of garbage disposed of in our oceans.
The Plastiki is a distinctive, one-of-a-kind 60-foot (20m) catamaran made out of plastic bottles, srPET plastic and recycled waste products.
clipped from www.core77.com
You can follow the Plastiki Expedition here, and read Reuters coverage of it here. Lastly, here's a video describing the project:
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Voyage of the Plastiki
The perils of innovation on the high seas.
Update: The Plastiki departure has been delayed until summer 2009. Until then, read updates from our Plastiki correspondent and see the workshop in a photo gallery
clipped from www.youtube.comThe Plastiki: A Peek at the Production Happenings on Pier 31
clipped from www.sfweekly.com
A prototype of the Plastiki.
clipped from www.sfweekly.com
It's supposed to eventually look like this.
clipped from www.sfweekly.com
The catamaran's design.
clipped from www.sfweekly.com
Another look at the prototype.
clipped from www.strimoo.comPlastiki Project
clipped from www.reuters.com
In line with cradle to cradle thinking, when the voyage is done, the team plans to upcycle the boat.
A plastic boat won’t solve all our problems, but de Rothschild is attempting to spark conversations about rethinking waste. He aims to showcase a solution, and encourage people to rethink waste as a resource.
“This is the hundredth year of plastic,” de Rothschild pointed out. “Plastic is an amazing material and it is still misunderstood. I’m trying to get people to think about plastic as part of the solution.”
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Sources:
- Plastiki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Message in a Bottle (or 12,500 of them): The Plastiki to set sail - Core77
- David de Rothschild's Plastiki Voyage - National Geographic Adventure Magazine
- YouTube - The Plastiki: A Peek at the Production Happenings on Pier 31
- San Francisco Slideshows - The Plastiki Prepares to Set Sail
- Streaming Video - Plastiki Project - Vimeo - Strimoo.com
- Greener by Design: Rethinking Waste with Plastiki, the Plastic Boat | Green Business | Reuters
- The Plastiki Expedition 2009
- Message In A Bottle | Popular Science
- Plastiki: Message in a bottle raft | Green Tech - CNET News
- Boat made of plastic bottles to make ocean voyage - CNN.com
- The Making of the Plastiki: The New Yorker Blog: Online Only: The New Yorker
- Sundance Channel: ECO TRIP - About David de Rothschild
- San Francisco - The Snitch - Plastiki Prepares to Set Sail from Pier 31
- The Plastiki, Sailing Boat Made of 12,500 2-Liter Plastic Bottles by CubeMe
