An adventurer is collecting thousands of recycled 2-liter plastic soda bottles to make a boat and sail it from California to Australia, a journey of 11,000 miles through treacherous seas.
Expedition leader Davis de Rothschild hopes his one-of-a-kind vessel named “Plastiki”, now being built on a San Francisco pier, will boost recycling of plastic bottles, which he says are a symbol of global waste. Except for the masts, which are metal, everything on the 60-foot catamaran is made from recycled plastic.
"The idea is to put no kind of pollution back into the atmosphere, or into our oceans for that matter, so everything on the boat will be composted, " he said.
"Everything will be recycled. Even the vessel is going to end up being recycled when we finish."
The vessel's twin hulls will be filled with 12,000 to 16,000 bottles. Skin-like panels made from recycled PET, a woven plastic fabric, will cover the hulls and a watertight cabin, which sleeps four.
Two wind turbines and an array of solar panels will charge a bank of 12-volt batteries, which will power several onboard laptop computers, a GPS and SAT phone.
Only about 10 percent of the Plastiki will be made from new materials, de Rothschild said. He declined to reveal how much it's costing him to build the boat.
The ultimate goal of the Plastiki voyage is not just to encourage people to embrace clean, renewable energy but also to see consumer waste as a potential resource.
Plastiki is scheduled to set sail from San Francisco in April and the trip is expected take more than 100 days.
~ Source: Yellows and Blues ~