Plastiki Expedition: 12,000 Miles in a Boat Made From Plastic Bottles

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Derek Markham in Nature & Science

The Plastiki Expedition is the brainchild of David de Rothschild, and the goal is audacious: to sail 12,000 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Sydney in a boat made entirely out of plastic bottles and recycled waste products. They plan to embark in April, carrying (among others) four scientists from the Scripps Research Institute who will study ocean acidification, marine debris, overfishing, and coral bleaching.

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De Rothschild and his crew of scientists will be sailing through the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating man-made disaster twice the size of Texas, located between California and Hawaii. The aim is raising the world’s awareness of the plight of the environment and our role in it.

“It is our aim to captivate, inspire and activate tomorrow’s environmental thinkers and doers to take positive action for our Planet and to be smart with waste, ultimately we hope to inspire people to rethink waste as a valuable resource. One person’s waste could be another person’s treasure.”

And how green is the boat? Their craft is a catamaran made from 20,000 plastic bottles injected with CO2 packed it into pontoons. The pontoons are strapped to a rigid plastic tube running the length of the hull, and they’ve assembled the whole thing without glues or resins, so when the trip is over, the entire boat is recyclable.

For more details, and to sign up to receive updates on the expedition, see the Adventure Ecology Plastiki page.

Tags:

ocean, plastic bottles, Plastiki

7 Responses to “ Plastiki Expedition: 12,000 Miles in a Boat Made From Plastic Bottles ”

Rob Wallacce

13. Mar, 2009

For a movie setting or documentary this would be great. Very interesting subjectimatter

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Barry Clarke

20. Apr, 2009

I think this expedition is a grand idea and I wish the team every success in this endeavour. However I think that the fact that a S. African, Josian Heyerdahl , grandaughter of Thor Heyerdahl,( of the Kontiki expedition), is one of the team/crew on the Plastiki expedition is appropriate and historically quite significant.

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h.m. wyeth

22. May, 2009

canoe builders in hawai`i and other pacific islands could benefit from Plastiki technology. Living on small patches of land out here in the middle of the Pacific, we have limited space for disposal of all the plastic bottles our people seem to find necessary. If the technology proves viable, it would both help solve our landfill problems, and provide an inexpensive way to build canoes. Keep up the good work!

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Brian

06. Oct, 2009

Keep up the good work!

I was looking to do the same thing across the Great Lakes many years ago, you beat me to it and on a grander scale. lol

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Phil Manker

23. Oct, 2009

I was really hoping this was going to become a reality! What’s the current status of the expedition? It still seems doable, given the right construction techniques. If the bottles used for the hull where blow-molded in a square configuration, they would have enough mating surfaces to bond with silicones, or be thermally fused together!

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