Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Plastiki

The Plastiki is a catamaran built out of 12,500 plastic bottles and other waste products. It took three years to plan the boat and build it. David de Rothschild has already started sailing the boat from the US to Sydney, Australia on 19th March. The reason why the boat is made out of bottles is to draw attention to the amount of waste put into the oceans. David and six other people from the crew will sail across the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a wide area of garbage on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Some say that the Patch is as large as the state Texas but the they are still not sure of the size. David says that the Plastiki is 100% recycable. He says that if he can sail the boat across the Pacific, then there is without a doubt that people can build boats that won't dispose waste products. He used the Plastiki to help people think waste as a resource. The bottom line is that he did this to raise awareness about waste products in and out of the ocean.