After nearly 4 years of development The Plastiki - a sustainable, Web-interfaced vessel made of recycled plastic bottles and reusable plastics finally set sail yesterday from San Francisco for the start of its big adventure across the South Pacific, a journey that will last a 100 days and cross 10, 500 miles.
The crew of six led by David De Rothschild will journey from San Francisco to Hawaii, Midway Island, Bikini Atoll, Vanuatu and, finally, Sydney, Australia. The destinations for the craft's great voyage were selected to highlight a variety of environmental threats, including overfishing and climate change. The key portion of The Plastiki's route will be its voyage to a region of floating plastic trash and debris known as the Eastern Garbage Patch. This patch is estimated to be twice the size of Texas. De Rothschild and his team will collect water samples to study and, using a satellite phone to post photos and video clips on the website of Adventure Ecology, and environmental organization that he founded. His goal is to call attention to the perils of ocean polluting and to suggest a solution: waste as a resource. Inspired, in part, by Thor Heyerdahl's Pacific crossing, in 1947, on a raft call the Kon-Tiki, de Rothschild dubbed the project Plastiki.
documentary credit: tyler manson
